Solar PV Generation - Comparison & Monitoring.
Comparison & Monitoring
Whether you already have a solar PV system and want to compare your own generation against other systems which are nearby in order to check for potential performance issues, or need information to help validate claims when looking to purchase a system, or even looking for information to help research PV generation variability on a global basis, you'll need to find a decent resource.
A number of inverter manufacturers offer their own monitoring & comparison solution, for example SMA's Sunny Places, however, most PV system owners looking to track & compare their system's relative performance tend to have a preference to contribute information to independent sites such as PVOutput (described on related post).
Interface & Monitoring Requirements
Whichever manufacturer independent solution is to be used to track & compare performance, it will need to support the wide range of equipment manufacturers and the differences in user infrastructure and individual technical abilities which exist. Various automated data uploading options need to be available which enable analysis & comparison to a reasonable time-slice resolution, many inverters record generation in 5 or 10 minute intervals so matching this for comparison would be ideal.
To offer the widest support for different systems, uploading of data would need to include support for direct interfaces from inverters, local batch data extraction & processing before submission, interfaces with various forms local monitoring hardware and,of course, other cloud based monitoring options.
Where monitoring or comparison at this level of detail isn't a requirement or technical ability worries prevail, there are also options to periodically upload data files manually (formatting information provided) or for direct manual entry.
For any system, it should be possible to compare periodic (daily ,weekly etc) generation against it's own historical data or rolling averages as well as selecting other specific system or groups of other systems using a range of filters such as locality, orientation etc.
Initial Data Load
It's likely that in most instances the requirement to monitor and compare performance isn't really a priority, whilst for a few it can almost become an obsession. Those who chose to compare performance will likely do so well after their system has been installed, therefore whichever system is chosen will need the ability to upload their generation history. This would normally be best achieved through local data extraction which can be manipulated into a into a format which suits an import interface. If an upload interface isn't available then it's probably going to be a case of manually entering daily generation figures, or accepting some form of period block data entry.
Additional Functionality
To enable a further level of analysis, comparison sites should also also provide the ability to upload additional data which would be relevant to many contributors. These datasets should include ambient temperatures from owned, or local, weather stations as well as site specific energy consumption (where relevant technologies are available) which can be used to provide 'net' energy analysis.
