"What is unique about our service," explained Locus Energy VP Adrian De Luca, "is that nosotros take that data and combine information technology with proprietary analytics."

Estimator screen dashboards that monitor renewable energy systems and report field data are now commonplace. Locus Free energy believes it has an edge there.

There are iv key components to those proprietary analytics, De Luca said: virtual irradiance, an expected performance model, a waterfall analysis and the forecasting of solar output.

These analytics are enhanced by the feedback of data from the more than xv,000 solar systems to which Locus Free energy has access.

With that data and its assessment of satellite meteorological imagery, explained Locus Free energy Product and Analytics Manager Alex Thornton, Locus can "evaluate how a organization is performing compared to expectations and how information technology is performing compared to other systems."

"Virtual irradiance," said De Luca, "is a calculation engine that runs every fifteen minutes and will tell the user how much sunlight is hitting the ground anywhere in the continental U.S. with a one-kilometer-by-one-kilometer resolution."

Companies like 3Tier and Clean Power Research use the same publicly available NASA satellite imagery to decide solar irradiance, De Luca said. Only they offer standalone data sets, whereas Locus integrates that with its data from those 15,000 sites, which essentially deed every bit solar sensors and tell the Locus system how accurate its calculations are.

"Our tool estimates how much electricity the PV system should produce from the amount of sun striking the footing and compares it to how much is being produced," Thornton said. "Using those two together gives a much better idea than other providers that don't have the ground sensor network."

Another group of companies provide dashboards with solar performance data. They include, De Luca said, "Ability Ane (NASDAQ:PWER), which bought two of the original providers, Fat Spaniel and Energy Recommerce, Draker, which focuses on commercial and utility systems, DECK Monitoring, and Also Energy." None, he said, have Locus Energy's reach.

Locus Energy began building its 15,000-solar-sensor network when information technology was called by the state of Connecticut to install smart meters in 1,000 homes participating in a very early solar system 3rd-political party-ownership (TPO) financing program. That was 2008. At present, Locus information source partners are many of the leading TPO players, including Clean Ability Finance and Sungevity, as well as major solar builders and suppliers, including NRG Free energy (NYSE:NRG) and Dow PowerHouse (NYSE:DOW), and electronics providers, including Tigo and Growatt.

The expected performance model is a formula, De Luca said. Like comparable formulas adult by NREL and PVsyst, it combines irradiance with a range of organisation details to produce an expected ability output in kilowatts.

"What is different near the Locus formula," he explained, "is that every v minutes, as we get a reading from the field, we also generate an identical value for expected performance, and so there is a constant true-up of what happened and what should have happened."

The system'due south Waterfall Analysis uses a range of algorithms and empirical models to identify which of a set of six factors is causing a difference between a system's expected and measured performances.

The 6 factors are: weather condition uncertainty, snow reanimation, shading, equipment downtime, equipment degradation, inverter clipping, and other causes. The calculation is made considering the system can recognize and distinguish betwixt the performance deviation profile of each of the factors.

"The six factors represent the near likely sources of losses, the low-hanging fruit," Thornton said. "There may in the future be ten or twenty measures."

The organisation'south ability to identify specific causes of performance deviation has been tested over about a year on ten PV installations. It is not necessarily a statistically valid sampling that unequivocally proves the efficacy of the Waterfall Analysis, Thornton acknowledged, but "we are confident in the output it is giving."

Such an analysis could make a critical difference in solar industry operations and maintenance, De Luca noted. "The manufacture is still grasping at straws on the most efficient manner to expect at performance information and decide whether it is worth the time to transport someone into the field," he said.

More data may not mean more economic controlling, he acknowledged. "But correct now, the decision is based on limited information. This will assist inform that decision."

The forecasting of solar output does with forecasting data what the expected performance model does with historical data. "The models we currently accept go to 10 days out," De Luca said.

Only the analysis is based on 3 different sets of meteorological data, Thornton noted, one for upwards to six hours alee, one from six hours to ten days ahead and a bones atmospheric condition report for beyond ten days.

The Locus Free energy service is sold in different ways, De Luca said. The newest generation of the core smart meter hardware and a five-yr software license is $600. Utility-scale systems can be $ten,000 or more than.

"Our systems tin run on a single solar panel on a utility pole in the middle of nowhere," De Luca said, "all the mode up to utility scale. We are non merely accumulation rooftop organization information. More of our revenue now comes from commercial and utility scale."