Satellite-supported system monitoring from Meteotest

In the wake of the PVSAT-2 project on the use of satellite data for yield monitoring of PV systems, Augsburg, Germany-based company Meteocontrol GmbH is not the only company bringing a commercially viable product onto the market (see PI 3/2005, p. 23), the Swiss company Meteotest will also soon be entering the game.

© Enecolo AG Solar control: The Spyce system at work.

Over the last few months, the company has been searching for customers to test the monitoring system called Spyce (Satellite Photovoltaic Yield Control & Evaluation) developed together with Enecolo AG from Mönchaltorf in Switzerland. According to Meteotest, many large inverter manufacturers are taking part in the testing phase, including Swiss company Sputnik. Having incurred delay due to technical difficulties in data flow, testing was supposed to begin in December and continue through January. Sales are estimated to start early this year.

The system uses data from the European weather satellite Meteosat 8 together with the results of terrestrial weather stations in order to determine the irradiation conditions in a PV system location. This is then compared to the yield data from the inverter, which is accessed via the Internet. Purchase and installation of one‘s own measurement devices is no longer necessary, so the big advantage of Spyce in comparison to other monitoring systems is therefore the price – subscription costs only €39 ($46) per system per year. However, adding this up over a 20-year system lifespan brings the cost advantage into perspective.

Moreover, Spyce‘s ease of integration varies from system to system – seamless compatibility is only possible with systems equipped with modern inverters that have an integrated data logger and a connection point for data transfer. All other systems can be fitted with an external data logger, called Spyce-log. Though still in the prototype phase, Meteotest targets a price of around 500 CHF ($380). In addition, in some cases setting up access to Spyce may have to be carried out by Meteotest employees, at a cost of around €150 ($177) depending on particular conditions.

However, under normal conditions using Spyce should be no more complicated than setting up a telephone landline. On the homepage, interested parties can set up personal access and transmit data from their PV systems. The expected yield values then arrive the following day, and thereafter, the system will be configured for regular data transfer. From that point on, information is saved every hour and accessed once a day for evaluation. If the comparison of the irradiation data with the system yield suggests that there is a technical error, the operator is automatically notified and is also informed of possible causes of the problem. Moreover, the operator of the system can also check its status on the Internet at any time.

But doing so without the use of measurement devices carries with it a certain lack of precision. Even if Meteosat 8 is much more accurate than its predecessor, this device can‘t give any exact figures in the event of thick cloud cover. While the combination with terrestrial stations and software developed for the PVSAT project balances this problem out over longer periods, variations of 10 percent in daily average values are unavoidable so far. Still, the information is more than sufficient to alert the operator of errors or even complete system failures. Spyce will be available throughout Europe first in German and English language versions, with plans for a Spanish and French version to be added during 2006

For information and registration, go to: www.spyce.ch

Meteotest
Fabrikstrasse 14
3012 Bern, Switzerland
phone +41/31/30726-26, fax -10
office@meteotest.ch
www.meteotest.ch

Jochen Siemer
© PHOTON International, January 2006