"With two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions stemming from energy production and use, the energy sector is at the core of the transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy system.
Solar power is leading the forefront of this process: in 2016 it grew faster than any other fuel, and in 2017 the solar capacity installed worldwide exceeded for the first time 100 GW.
Large (LS) and very-large scale (VLS) installations are the major drive of this breath-taking growth: the pipeline of large installations in 2016 is 200 GW, i.e. 65% of total installed capacity worldwide.
Such huge installations present relevant operational and financial challenges though, for their magnitude requires special efforts for maximizing performance while at the same time keeping costs for operations and maintenance (O&M) low.
Monitoring the amount of available sunlight is of paramount importance to this aim, for it allows to quickly identify production drops, manage diagnostics, schedule maintenance, and timely take corrective actions to couple with system failures or inefficiencies, which translates in an overall increase of production – and hence of revenues.
But while in large installations production is precisely monitored by small sections, the assessment of available sunlight is typically performed on very few single points.
As a consequence, when slight underperformances occur, it can take days before they are noticed, the system failure is precisely localized, and its cause is fixed.
This results in loss of production, and thus of revenues, and in low efficiency of O&M operations.
This is due to the fact that several devices typically assembled in large, bulky and expensive solar monitoring stations(SMSs) are necessary for performing a complete irradiation monitoring. Both for economic and logistic reasons indeed, SMSs do not allow for a fine grained irradiation monitoring, and this translates into the following pains:
(i) for plant managers: poor control on systems performance and, as a consequence, under-optimized production and low maintenance efficiency;
(ii) for oweners and investors: under-optimized profitability from their investments;
(iii) for the society as a whole, from the under exploited potential for a low carbon, secure, clean and efficient energy.
The ESA 2.0 project aimed at bringing to the market an innovative solar irradiation sensor making irradiation monitoring simpler, cheaper and more accurate than it presently is, allowing to take a step forward towards the decarbonisation of the energy system. This goal has beeen pursued by:
• Speeding up market introduction and easing market uptake, by delivering # 30 calibrated industrial prototypes of the ESA v.2.0 sensor and # 30 industrial prototypes of the ESAnet docking station, both certified according to the relevant EU regulations, and “bank approved” for use in PV plants;
• Implementing market replication activities involving final users by running pilots in operating solar installations owned by leading industry players;
• Laying foundation for the successful commercial exploitation of the ESA 2.0 technology and the long term growth of the business line;
• Building a strong market position and raising brand awareness aimed at acknowledging Alitec as manufacturer of dependable irradiation monitoring technologies, and at positioning the ESA sensor not as substitute but as a brand new technology substituting the full set of traditional irradiation measurement tools."
