Objective
As the photovoltaics (PV) industry has exponentially grown towards large scale installation over the last years, the need for accurately monitoring the solar resource of PV power plants has increased. Historically, the PV industry has relied on monitoring stations for irradiance measurements, i.e. bulky and expensive equipment featuring pyranometers, pyrheliometes and sun trackers. However, because of their severe economic and operational limits, this solution does not allows for fine grained detection and intelligence of system failures causing losses of production, and thus of revenue, and low efficiency of maintenance operations.
Our project aims at bringing to the market an innovative smart and handy environmental sensor featuring innovations in terms of technology, capabilities and cost that significantly exceed limits and downsides of irradiation assessment tools commercially available. By enabling a simple and efficient single-tool monitoring it empowers plant managers for precise and accurate characterization of the PV performance, that directly translates into room for optimizing profitability.
Two major European companies have expressed a strong interested in the our sensor and are willing to run pilot tests in their PV installations: one is LightSource, the leading developer of solar PV projects with 30% market share in the large scale solar sector in UK; the other is Enel Green Power, the Italian-based multinational developer and manager of 1.6 GW of large-scale solar plant across Europe, Africa and Americas. These two giants cumulatively manage 1.1% of total solar capacity installed worldwide.
Fields of science
- humanitiesartsmodern and contemporary artradio and television
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economics
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energyphotovoltaic
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementcommerce
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.3. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy Main Programme
- H2020-EU.2.1.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
- H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2
Coordinator
54023 Filattiera
Italy
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