kWh Analytics and NREL have won an award for their work with their rate of degradation tool. The Open-Source Degradation Analysis Toolbox is their joint collaboration and was recognized at NREL and Sandia Labs’ 2017 PV Reliability Conference, held in early March.
Degradation plays an important role in PV project finance, affecting the valuation of energy generation over the lifetime of the investment. kWh Analytics and NREL worked to provide open-source software tools to statistically derive degradation rates of photovoltaic modules and systems. By open-sourcing degradation analysis code, the groups hope to foster open collaboration on analytical techniques while providing off-the-shelf tools for researchers, independent engineers, and industry stakeholders. Empowered with analytically-derived degradation rates, we can quantify equipment durability, assess the financial risk of currently operating projects, and provide data-driven input in financial models for future projects.
“In the world of solar finance, everyone points to a single paper for degradation rate for PV systems: the landmark paper by Dirk Jordan and Sarah Kurtz from which our industry derives the 0.5% degradation assumption,” said co-author and data scientist from kWh Analytics, Adam Shinn. “This research group at NREL unquestionably remains at the forefront of developing our industry’s understanding of PV degradation. It was an honor to work alongside Dirk Jordan, Chris Deline, and Michael Deceglie, and we are glad to share off-the-shelf tools for researchers in our industry.”
Open invitations for people who are interested to use this software or contribute to it are available in this public repository: https://github.com/kwhanalytics/rdtools.
News item from kWh Analytics
Tell Us What You Think!