PV Lighthouse Secures $1.97 Million AUD to Develop Yield Forecast Modelling for Utility-PV Scale Solar Projects
Keith McIntosh, Founder and CEO of PV Lighthouse and SunSolve
PV Lighthouse, a resource for photovoltaic engineers and scientists, announced today that it has received $1.97 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) through the Advancing Renewables Program to fund the continued development of SunSolve Yield, the world’s most advanced simulation engine that improves yield forecasting for utility-scale solar projects.
SunSolve Yield was created in 2019 in partnership with Cypress Creek Renewables in a research project funded by the United States Department of Energy. It has been used to more accurately predict the performance of solar trackers, as demonstrated in studies led by Array Technologies, CFV Labs, Cypress Creek, PVEL and FTC Solar.
SunSolve Yield provides a digital twin of the structures and photovoltaic (PV) modules used in utility-scale solar projects. Developers rely on SunSolve Yield to rapidly answer design questions that would previously have taken months to investigate and days to compute. This accelerates the speed for developers to deliver utility-scale projects as countries around the world are on a mission to accelerate the use of renewable energy.
With SunSolve Yield, developers can quickly and easily create a 3D model that accurately represents the system structural components and the PV modules themselves. Using SunSolve Yield's high performance physics-based model, developers can determine the annual yield of their solar projects and explore the impact of different weather, locations or mounting structures.
The high level of detail in the SunSolve Yield model means that developers can have greater confidence in their yield forecasts for both internal and project financing purposes. With the cost of financing utility-scale solar projects escalating with higher global interest rates, financiers are looking for a greater level of accuracy and sophistication in forecasts to drive down the cost of financing.
Keith McIntosh, Founder and CEO of PV Lighthouse and SunSolve said, “Before SunSolve existed, developers did not have a modelling solution that could accurately represent their structures and modules. This meant they had to guesstimate several of the loss factors required for their yield forecasts. Now developers can rapidly calculate these factors with SunSolve, giving them greater confidence in their forecasts – a key advantage when negotiating project financing.”
SunSolve Yield was developed from SunSolve Power. It utilises the same physics-based optical engine that has long been employed by the world’s top module manufacturers, such as LONGi and Qcells, to design and optimise their record performing solar cells and modules and global solar tracker manufacturers such as Nevados and Nextracker to develop intelligent solar tracking solutions for large-scale utility solar projects.
McIntosh added, “ARENA’s investment in SunSolve Yield is an endorsement of the innovation and value that SunSolve delivers to the global solar industry. With the ARENA funding and support from our industry partners, we’ll continue to increase the accuracy of those forecasts which ultimately reduces the cost of financing a solar project.”
The funding from ARENA will allow PV Lighthouse to accelerate the development of SunSolve Yield through the hiring of additional researchers and programmers. SunSolve Power and SunSolve Yield are available exclusively through PV Lighthouse.
