Background, Description, Delivery and Learning Objective: In recent years it has become increasingly apparent to the solar industry that there are significant biases present in pre-construction energy assessment methodologies. Operational assessments of solar plants show that actual production simply is not living up to the pre-construction estimates. All the leading players in the industry: consultants, developers, academics, government agencies are working on understanding this problem better and diagnosing the causes of the mismatch between expectations and actual performance.
Several causes for this underperformance have been suggested, ranging from poor equipment availabilities, real-world tracker issues, curtailment, atypical weather impacts and optimistic pre-construction estimates that do not capture the full range of energy losses experienced by solar power plants.
This presentation will cover Natural Power’s latest work on comparing pre-construction energy estimates from a wide range of solar plants with actual project performance data to quantify and resolve the causes of the P50 bias. Natural Power will share some of the causes of bias and how the bias can be reduced by the use of advanced modeling techniques and adjustments to loss factor assumptions.
Target Audience: Solar project developers and owners, industry analysts and consultants.
Learning Objectives: 'Upon completion, participant will be able to… First: Understand the reasons behind the mismatch in pre-construction estimates and real-world operational performance.
Second: See the natural spread of pre-construction to operational results even with a low median bias.
Third: Prescribe areas for further examination of operating plants to see what remedial measures might be taken to improve performance.
