Second Generation Analytics on solar power plants at www.PVwizard.com
Silicon Valley-
Wattminder has achieved significant innovations in analytics on performance of solar power installations. In November 2007, www.pvmonitor.net was developed and offered to the public, as an on-demand, photovoltaic performance benchmark calculator. It still IS the world’s first such tool. In October 2011, we improved on the benchmark calculator with features like Air Mass correction, Tracking option, Aging, and Reflectivity and rolled out our second generation PV Performance Analytics tools, adding Performance Check, and Degradation Assessment; at www.PVwizard.com. These advanced & unique resources are still offered free to the public, during the open beta period. We are hoping our tool can be effective in helping in detecting and removing a growing problem of under-performance in solar power sites around the world, amounting to 20 GWh’s of energy (estimated $5B per year) that was NOT generated due to some unknown fault in solar power sites.
Our value proposition has been validated with 3 SBIR/STTR grants form NSF and DOE Phase I and Phase II; to study failure mechanisms in solar array, focusing on web-based algorithms to detect and diagnose hotspot failure in solar arrays, at low-cost. By using the latest in Programmable System On Chip technology from Cypress Semiconductor, our instrumentation cost for advanced diagnostic monitoring will cost less than 2.5 Cents/W, with non-disruptive installation. Our secret sauce, the Complex Irradiance Sensor, without moving part, will fully capture and characterize Sun’s energy at a PV site, in 9 directional components. We are now ready to start commercialization of our IP and build up our Web-IT-PV-Engineering enterprise with our first outside investment, of $5.5 million, expecting to achieve break-even by mid-2015.
The solar industry has grown at the whim of governent incentive program, and had achieved over-all yearly growth rate about 50%. Commercial and utility scale projects are driving megawatts of capacity being planned and in development, subject to varying delays in permitting process. In general, there has been little focus on the operations and maintenance aspects. As a result, the practice of photovoltaic generation is in many cases un-disciplined practice, with many solar installations running without oversight. Some estimate the magnitude of under-performance to the tune of 20GWhs. or roughly $5B in un-realized energy production.
Additional information are available at: ExecutiveSummary and Powerpoint presentation For further information please contact us(internal-native access).
For more information please contact: Steve Yang, P.E. President http://www.wattminder.com
Perspectives from 'Differentiating Quality PV' Mar 8,2012
I mingled with a group of VIP researchers from Sandia National Labs, NREL, and seasoned photovoltaic practitioners in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel earlier this week.
The subtopic of the event was 'Standards and Methodology for underwriting certainty'
I think it should have been 'uncertainty'; there is no 'certainty' in long term operation of solar power sites. I stoodup and advocated that a resource similar to PVSAT-2 organized by EU and a consortium of academics and O&M service entities to provide near real-time irradiance for every square kilometer of Earth's surface on the European continent. This investment should go a long way towards solving the $5B problem of un-realized electric energy due to under-performance in solar power installations around the world.
Oct 28, 2011
Ever Wonder
about your solar investment?
? Want to see what your site should be producing ?
? Is your site under-performing? get an independent assessment
? Has your site degraded excessively? --due to aging.
We can
give you the answer, Beta Trial roll-out •
Second
Generation Analytics for Photovoltaic Sites
Wattminder, Inc. (Silicon Valley) proudly
introduces world's first on-demand performance analytics on solar power sites.
We
refined our 5-year old PV performance benchmark at http://www.pvmonitor.net, and added two
new functions: Performance Checkup and Degradation Assessment, based on actual
recorded revenue-grade power meter output, or at lower accuracy, inverter
read-out. These new functions are in free trials during this beta testing
period and will become paid services in 30 days.
Please
feel free to visit and exercise these innovative features and provide critique
or input by using our native email facility. Every meaningful feedback is
appreciated and will be evaluated carefully. In addition, we offer special
incentive --virtual site visit-assessment, for each meaningful input.
Thanks
for your interest and trial engagement.
Sincerely,
Steve Yang, P.E. Founder
info'at'wattminder'dot'com 408-306-5803
Wattminder, the leader in Analytics for solar power --awardee of 3 SBIR grants on diagnostics for photovoltaics
Wattminder Newsletter: Oct.2011
Update
Highlights:
The
following are snippets of features or IP being developed by Wattminder
:
* Complex Irradiance Photonmeter that captures full(9) irradiance components at
a solar power site
* Array string current
characterization performed in the analog DC & spectral and digital domains
* Diagnostic algorithms for
fault detection in real-time • in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon
University-West
* On-demand analytics
on solar power sites to any web visitor
*
Android App • PVwzard that presents a rich, friendly, fun user-interface
to our PV benchmark calculator
Market Intelligence:
Tidbits
from colleagues who visited the SPI2011 in Dallas, TX points to the facts
(evolving
trends
in product features and monitoring service offerings in solar power)
* Monitoring is becoming truly a
commodity, only few booths for pure-play
monitoring service --ArgusOn-SPX, AlsoEnergy, PowerAnalytics, Noveda, and MeteoControl
* Competition to watch,
AlsoEnergy.com '..industry’s only complete
client-customized
web application, .. reduce risk,
improve energy supply chain transparency
* Competition among inverter manufacturers are getting
fierce, there were huge exhibit boots
from Schneider-Xantrex,
Advanced Energy, SunnyBoy-SMA, Power-one
Development Accomplishments: (& responsible wattminder)
* DOE grant task with CMU to
develop a web-based PV array diagnostic platform has achieved
the World's
most instrumented solar array --918 sensors on a 24-module array;
including 864
temperature sensors, Pyranometers, voltage and 4
current sensors.
It is
undergoing final integration and check-out phase, while diagnostic algorithms
are being
developed.
(Dan, Bob, Jin)
* Our separate Wattminder designed analog processing front-end, based on
PSOC5 from Cypress
Semi.
also unique in it's adoption of System-on-chip
technology that does local analog
processing on
string current, voltage, & Irridiance,
temperature sensors that will feed state
parameters to
algorithms running in our web-server (Steve,
Dennis, Bob, Jin)
* PVwizard.com, our
second-generation analytics for photovoltaic performance at solar sites,
had been
rolled out as a public beta trial. It offers enhanced benchmark calculator(BMC), Performance
Check, &
Degradation Assessment. It is based on 'freemium'
business model, where BMC will
always be free,
after the beta, the other services will require $10 and $20 fee per incidence.
*
Android App-SV, PVwizard our
mobile access front-end is in its final development stage. It
will greatly simplify the data-entry to our BMC by automating
and facilitating parameter acquisition,
to entice
habitual engagement with our server. With over 200Million smart phones in
use,
it is a must to put our analytic resources out there to check up
on 230,000 PV sites around
the world.
(Eric,
supporting the Android-SV consultants)
*
Complex Irradiance Phontonmeter, our Tinman coupled with an Android App, is under
contract with a group near Boston MA. Dennis will hand-off
a demo hardware next week.
* We are also
developing a Dust & Rain tracking database that will assess the effect of
Dust on
performance of an array in our database. (William)
* We are building
up a database on Angel and Venture investors who maybe more sympathetic
to solar power, involving IT, and alanlytics
(Doah, Steve)
Current
Development Focus: (responsible wattminder)
* Add community
features to our PVwizard and Wattminder
sites, such as
1. Blogging at
PVwizard site, evolving into a forum, for idea
sharing and education
2. Useful resources for PV, a page with links and abstract about other
resources for PV
owners
and operators. (Eric,
Jin, Steve)
* Real-time IV
Chart analyzer, This resources got
splintered through turn-over and server changes.
It
is still a Wattminder-unique capability and will be
revived soon. (Dennis,
Zoneson, Eric)
* Paypal-Pro capability to be implemented for
our revenue service of PVwizard.com,
scheduled Nov 19, 2011. (Eric,
also Android team)
* CPV and CSP
oversight monitoring capability is being explored (Prof. Rhee, Steve)
* A new market, a real need and
a challenge for Wattminder, --
How can we
assess the financial risk of a proposed large, utility scale PV project?
This is a true niche market.
Targets are investors and would-be investors, or joint
venturers --Bankers,
Private Equity managers are a different group of entities whose
language is not familiar to us.
These are the people who determine if a project gets its
life started! To them it is a
new field, different from other endeavors, such as franchise
business, traditional power plants, or
oil-exploration. They need help with some
quantization of financial risk of a
proposed PV project at a site. Many projects
don't get approved, because they won't
support a project, on account of unknown
financial risk.
(Steve,
Becker, Powers )
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