Wilfried van Sark

Solar Event 7 oktober 2014

Den Bosch

Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Citizen Science: het succes van de

Tel de Zon actie

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Content

•! Why

•! How

•! Results •! Conclusion

•! Part of Solar Days 2014

•! Thanks: Holland Solar, Stichting Monitoring Zonnestroom

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Citizen science

•! Citizen science (also known as crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, or networked science) is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists, often by crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Formally, citizen science has been defined as "the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis”. Citizen science is sometimes called "public participation in scientific research.”

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Why

•! PV market expansion requires reliable information on a.o. the performance of PV systems

•! PV performance data is not readily available

•! Privacy, legal, financial reasons

•! Luckily, private PV owners share monitoring data over the Internet

•! However, the level of detail and measurement accuracy may prohibit a proper analysis

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“Counting the Sun” - Tel de Zon

•! AIM: Raise awareness

•! among the general public on the power of PV

•! among PV owners on the power of monitoring

•! Dutch Solar Days May 12-18, 2014

!!monitoring campaign “Tel de Zon” (Counting the Sun)

PIR, July 2014

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How

•! Recruit participants

•! Social media, flyers, national television (“Kassa”)

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How

•! Instructions to participants: measure PV yield in week May 12-18 (Sunday-Sunday)

•! Set-up website for participants to enter system data and weekly yield

•! Set-up data analysis (Python)

•! Determine performance ratio

•! Calculate reference yield from system data and irradiation data from nearest meteorologial stations (KNMI: 31 in the country). Plane of array conversion using Olmo model

•! Weekly yield: Yweek = Eweek/Pinstalled

•! Performance ratio: PR = Yweek/Yreference

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How

•! System data: •! Size, number of panels, orientation, tilt •! Brand/type of panels and inverter

•! Monitoring device

•! Remarks: shadow?

•! All participants would receive feedback on their system performance

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Results

!!5000 systems, including systems from two organizations (SolarCare, Zonnefabriek)

!!16.2 MWp (2% of total Dutch capacity of 722 MWp)

!!average system size 3.5 kWp

!!spread over the whole country

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Results: the weather

•! Total weekly irradiation: 41.9 kWh/m2

•! Geographical variation ~30%

cloudy sunny

Results: the weather

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Results: Energy yield

•! Total weekly yield: 531 MWh

•! Average weekly yield: 33.4 kWh/kWp (±25%)

•! Geographical variation correlates well with variation in irradiation

weekly yield average 33.4 kWh/kWp

Results: Energy yield

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Results: Performance Ratio

•! Average performance ratio 0.74±0.10

•! NO geographical variation

•! Some 10% of participants indicated some form of shadow; analysis of these systems revealed a performance ratio of 0.70±0.10.

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Summary: “Counting the Sun”

•! Most systems are performing well (PR 0.74±0.10) •! NO geographical variation in performance ratio

•! Some 10% of participants indicated some form of shade (PR 0.70±0.10)

irradiation yield performance ratio

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Conclusions

•! Campaign was a success

•! 5000 systems is a lot; automation necessity!

•! Feedback was given based on Performance ratio value in classes:

0.5 < PR < 0.7 ; 0.7 < PR < 0.85 ; PR > 0.85 mediocre good excellent •! Next year!?

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THANKS

•! Saskia ‘t Hart, Minne de Jong, Peer de Rijk, Arthur de Vries •! Panos Moraitis, Bhavya Kausika, Henrik van der Velde •! Pierre Gerrissen (SolarCare), Hessel van den Berg

(Zonnefabriek) •! Wido van Heemstra, Karin Keijzer

•! EU PVSEC 29: Poster award!