PV Lighthouse, a resource for photovoltaic engineers and scientists, has received $1.97 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to fund the continued development of SunSolve Yield, an advanced simulation engine that improves yield forecasting for utility-scale solar projects.
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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.
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.
PV Lighthouse and SunSolve founder and CEO Keith McIntosh 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.”
“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.”
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The funding from ARENA will allow PV Lighthouse to accelerate the development of SunSolve Yield through the hiring of additional researchers and programmers.
