Want to know what your PV system should be producing?

To address the problem of prevalent, un-detected, under-performance in many solar installations. We launched a free, public service Real-Time PV Performance bench mark website. It offers a sorely needed performance reference checkpoint for all solar electric system owners, available globally at www.pvperformance.com.

Any solar system owner and operators can now obtain mathematical model derived performance bench marks on line, and stop wondering about how their system is performing.

A visitor to the website, www.wattminder.com, or www.pvperformance.com, simply enters a brief set of values for 'vital statistics' of a solar system. The free performance predictor will output a look-up table for a number of environmental conditions, that this visitor's PV system should be producing at that instance­g iven the Sun's position and the solar array's location and attitude. The values provided serves as a checkpoint for a PV system owner who does not have a monitoring system, or if monitoring system does not indicate how well his/her system is performing. He/She may then manually check on his system's power meter reading, or from display on the inverter readout. If the numbers match, or co-relate well with each other, under somewhat different operating conditions, it would indicate his PV system is performing reasonably well.

Wondering how your solar system is working?

A free PV performance bench mark service

Official Google Blog: Corporate solar is coming

Official Google Blog: Corporate solar is coming

Can Google do it better? Demonstrate the best practices
on the web to lead the way?

How to keep 1.6MW of solar system humming at its optimal?
How can one tell how well it is working? The promised 7.5
year return-on-investment will be missed if the system should
under perform due to problems in design, installation and maintenance issues.

Wattminder has the answer! Real-time measurement compare against precise mathematical model prediction to flag
performance problem instantly. -see www.wattminder.com

High tech watchdog on solar systems performance

I feel like a self-appointed spokesman for more diligence in
detecting and correcting under-performances in solar
electric (photovoltaic) systems.

Having observed hundreds of Photovoltaic --the academic
name for solar electric systems; I conclude that many smaller
commercial and residential systems were not designed, or
installed properly and thus are performing under their
inherent system capacities. Many systems are performing
at 50 to 70% of their 'available' energy level. In other words,
they are only producing less than 70% of their design capacity,
at anytime, given whatever operating condition at that instance.
These systems are being robbed of their intented financial and
environmental goals!!

Now that most scientists are convinced of the global warming
in progress, I am challenging these and other scientists, and
engineers to help with solving this under-performance problem.

I'm thinking along the lines of low-cost instrumentation, web-
based monitoring & diagnostics, artificial intelligence driven
trouble-shooting, and alerting, and diagnostics using such
technologies as data-mining, pattern-matching, expert systems.

I welcome any and all comments on this topic.

Steve