Measuring Degradation of Fielded Systems on an Ongoing Basis with RdTools
- kWh Analytics, Inc.; kWh Analytics, Inc.
- kWh Analytics, Inc.
The solar investment community needs up-to-date and data-derived system degradation rates to use in financial models that calculate the risk and expectation of energy revenue. To date, the majority of financial models choose degradation rates from past studies that are limited and may not be representative of future solar assets (systems) they are financing. As the solar industry expands in all sectors (residential, commercial, and utility), there is a growing amount of energy production available to analyze. With the help of the open source degradation analysis code (RdTools) it is now possible to derive degradation on an ongoing basis and continuously provide up-to-date durability statistics to the investment community. Ongoing and accurate statistics of fielded photovoltaic systems allows financial stakeholders to constrain energy revenue projections, lower financial risk, and increase the bankability of solar.
This poster will present considerations and software engineering best practices to encourage data owners to measure degradation of their own photovoltaic assets on an ongoing basis. This poster will also preview an upcoming DOE-funded kWh Analytics degradation project which involves applying RdTools analysis on kWh Analytics’ industry database, aggregating results across variables such as weather, hardware, system configurations etc., and sharing the aggregated results with the broader community.
- Research Organization:
- kWh Analytics, Inc.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0008555
- OSTI ID:
- 1507571
- Report Number(s):
- Presentation: DOE-KWH-08555-001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Rdtools
Deciphering Degradation: Machine Learning on Real-World Performance Data (Final Report)