High Reliability Systems for In-field Solar Performance Measurement

As PV installations go down in cost, the BOS (Balance of Systems Cost) become a proportionally larger percentage of overall system cost. Mr. Linder's presentation discusses multiple ways to reduce the BOS of solar systems, while additionally increasing data availability overall earlier in the project, all while maintaining IEC-61724 compliance for data.The methods presented involve using last mile COTS data systems, of the type used by rural ISPs for home wireless internet delivery, powered by fully standalone array-powered or individual stand-alone solar-powered systems mounted in fields for data aggregation. In addition, Mr. Linder presents methods for inventory management and installation control that simplifies and speeds up considerably the boots-on-the ground effort of pyranometer and temperature sensor installation, calibration, and reporting. The use of these modern technologies, including 1500V array powered equipment, and pre-kitted and pre-installed systems avoid "stick building" of instrumentation equipment in the field, resulting in substantial savings in costs for SCADA monitoring systems. The results of these innovations include having much of the performance data required for ASTM 2848 or 2939 available prior to a field's first energization, allowing adequate time to verify system performance as the rest of the field comes online. We conclude that making SCADA systems for solar easier and faster to install, and deploying technologies based on modern wireless and standalone power systems lowers installation costs and increases reliability throughout the systems' lifetime.The conclusion is that dramatic cost savings and performance gains be made by having the SCADA and commissioning data available prior to inverter energization, to allow time for performance models to be tested and ran based on actual in-field data.