kWh Analytics today released the “2020 Solar Generation Index” (SGI) in collaboration with ten of the industry’s 15 largest solar asset owners. In parallel, the company announced that it issued the industry’s first Solar Technology Asset Risk (STAR) Comps reports with leading sponsors and asset owners to use industry data to validate solar production estimates on more than 1 GW of solar assets.
The 2020 SGI report is the largest industry-wide energy validation study. The report analyzed over 30% of the market’s non-residential systems in the United States and found that on average, systems underperformed their initial estimates by 6.3% on a weather-adjusted basis. The report concluded that performance estimates are systemically over-estimated and that assets are often not yielding the expected returns.
Every mature asset class requires market data to improve the accuracy and certainty of investment returns. To address this need, kWh Analytics released the STAR Comps reports to provide an objective standard to assess solar performance for solar asset investors.
“Although underperformance impacts multiple stakeholders, the long-term equity investors are the most exposed to inaccurate energy forecasts. Change won’t happen on its own. It is up to us as an industry to collectively allow hard data to overcome opinions, however well-intended,” said kWh Analytics CEO and Founder Richard Matsui. “We look forward to the shared work of improving our solar industry and accelerating the clean energy transition.”
STAR Comps leverages the industry’s largest database of solar performance to validate or invalidate performance estimates and loss assumptions for similarly designed systems. The STAR Comps report supports deal teams by improving efficiency and accuracy of asset diligence for projects under construction or under consideration for mergers and acquisitions. It also provides asset managers with context on asset performance to identify addressable versus exogenous performance issues.
“The STAR products are an innovative set of tools that combine analytics and industry data to offer unique insight into our systems’ performance. Our asset management team can now validate and contextualize what we see in the field with industry metrics and more accurate weather analytics to inform our O&M strategies,” said Paul Whitacre, Director of Asset Management at New Energy Solar Manager.
“kWh Analytics has data on production results that were previously ‘best guess’ estimates. It was only a matter of time that we began using market data to validate those numbers,” said Captona Founder and Partner Izzet Bensusan. “The STAR Comps product helps bridge the gap between the Independent Engineer reports and actual performance of projects and provides insight into what we can expect as the future owner and operator of a project.”
Equipped with objective data and comparables through STAR, the solar industry can course correct and improve accuracy and certainty of its investment returns.
News item from kWh Analytics
“The 2020 SGI report is the largest industry-wide energy validation study. The report analyzed over 30% of the market’s non-residential systems in the United States and found that on average, systems underperformed their initial estimates by 6.3% on a weather-adjusted basis. The report concluded that performance estimates are systemically over-estimated and that assets are often not yielding the expected returns.”
When designing a solar PV system, the panels power chosen are calculated at the STC, when temperature, haze, cloud cover and even wind speed can affect the output of solar PV panels. Some folks believe the PTC is better to use for systems design, it is actually about 10% less on average than the STC of a particular panel. With the price drop in solar PV panels over the last few years, designers are using the concept of “clipping” where the number of solar PV panels is over built to create a D.C. buss that is 1.3 to 1.5 times the A.C. output buss into the grid. One can do the same thing with residential solar PV installations. Instead of the razor’s edge calculated panel power, take a 1.3 to 1.5 design criteria and use that to build one’s home installed system. This can take care of panel dusting, temperature extremes and panel LID, to give an actual 30 year product.