DNV, the independent energy assurance provider, announced on 21 June the expansion of its Solar Resource Compass online software platform to include support for Europe, with additional regions to follow throughout 2024. The Compass is said to be a powerful software service that provides users with access to DNV’s solar resource data and energy yield predictions, online and on-demand.
It is powered by two other DNV products: SolarFarmer and Solcast. SolarFarmer is DNV’s flagship energy modelling platform for utility-scale solar PV projects, providing reliable energy yield predictions, based on comprehensive validations performed over the last five years. Solcast is DNV’s weather data service, which provides high-resolution and high-accuracy historical and forecasted weather data for any location in the world, utilising satellite imagery and sophisticated machine learning algorithms.
By combining SolarFarmer and Solcast, Solar Resource Compass provides users with what is believed to be a unique and powerful online service that can deliver indicative energy production estimates for any solar project, including the comparison of multiple irradiance datasets and the calculation of site-specific losses for dust and snow.
DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook report forecasts that from 2025 onwards almost all net new capacity added will be non-fossil. Wind and solar are set to grow ten-fold and seventeen-fold, respectively, between 2022 and 2050. However, one of the key challenges facing the solar industry is the unprecedented scale that will be required to deliver a decarbonised energy grid. DNV is committed to helping its customers to achieve that scale, and its digital solar products are key enabling technologies that are intended to deliver on this commitment. DNV customers have evaluated more than 10 000 projects in Solar Resource Compass in the last two years in the USA alone, and its application programming interfaces (APIs) have also enabled customers to introduce automation to their internal workflows.
Josh Tatel, director of Technical Asset Operations at Generate Capital described the impact SRC has had for their team, “Solar Resource Compass has become an invaluable resource in our workflow. SRC enables our team to perform technical due diligence on 3-5 times more solar energy assets than we could otherwise.” It also helps developers and investors navigate differences in models or assumptions.
Solar Resource Compass is available free for a limited time for users who register at https://src.dnv.com.
