BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For nearly a decade now, skytron® energy, the German supplier of high-quality monitoring, control and supervision solutions for the renewable energy sector, has been among the market leaders for remote supervision software for solar plants. PVGuard® - recognised by the prestigious Intersolar Award - has now made another considerable leap forward in its powerful capabilities as one of the industry’s leading tools for energy production planning, performance analysis and system integration.
PVGuard® - skytron energy’s SCADA software for the supervision of photovoltaic power plants - has been expanded in line with changing market conditions for renewable and hybrid power plants; due especially to the opening of the energy market for direct trading on electricity exchanges and the volatility in the investment sector for Renewables which is creating a demand for more versatile tools for production forecasting, flexible reporting, extended data analysis and interoperability.
Production forecasts for strategic grid and market integration
Finely-tuned
several times a day, production forecasts supplying estimates of hourly
production for up to 7 days in advance support the strategic trading of
electricity from solar plants. But not only the commercial dispatching
of electricity benefits from production forecasts. Grid connection
specifications of some countries, such as California (USA), Puerto Rico,
Romania and South Africa, also insist on a reliable prognosis of the
power available for grid injection. In PVGuard, an auto-adaptive
algorithm predicts the power production on the basis of current weather
data, plant characteristics and the output over recent weeks.
FlexReportXL for versatile plant performance reports
Drawing
from the comprehensive database accumulated by the underlying monitoring
system and having access to every single measurement value, the new
FlexReportXL report generator produces plant performance reports of the
highest informative value. Standard report templates may be used as a
simple starting point, or effortlessly adjusted to specific
requirements. Information from other sources, such as forecasts from the
yield assessment report, and customers’ own calculations may be
incorporated in the automatic report. FlexReportXL allows the generation
of multiple reports of different content as well as their e-mail
dispatch at selectable intervals from an hour to a year.
XY diagrams for enhanced function analysis
XY diagrams
enable the creation of 2D and 3D scatter plots as a basis for systematic
function analysis. Thus, for instance, the behaviour of the plants’
solar inverters can be graphically verified by displaying the measured
irradiance with respect to the inverter power or voltage values.
Similarly, cooling effects on solar modules can be investigated by
mapping the measurement values for irradiance, module temperature and
wind speed in a scatter diagram. Such in-depths diagnostics are a sound
basis for preventive maintenance planning and increase the plant’s
availability and efficiency.
System migration for modernising existing plants
Investors
and O&M companies whose renewable plant portfolios are growing through
the assimilation of plants containing diverse technical equipment,
highly appreciate the benefits of a unified supervision platform which
integrates all their different plants. PVGuard has therefore been opened
up to allow migration of measurement data from third-party monitoring
components into its long-term database and to refine this data for
visualisation, analysis and reporting in the PVGuard environment. When
deciding whether to employ such a “soft” data migration or rather to
undertake a “hard” retrofit of new sensor and logging equipment, skytron
energy provides all the engineering support necessary, including the
assessment of the original communication infrastructure of the existing
plant.
“The valuable feedback of our customers helps us to boost our SCADA system with new functions that truly reflect the wishes of those who use the tool in their everyday work“, emphasizes Frank Schnabel, Product Manager for PVGuard. “In 2014 we will continue offering our regular PVGuard workshops: not only to explain and apply the new features, but also to maintain a dynamic exchange of ideas with the users of PVGuard.”
About skytron energy
skytron energy has been developing
integrated monitoring, control and supervision systems since 1977. Now
one of the leading suppliers in the industry, specializing in
utility-scale and commercial power plants, it has installed monitoring
and control systems in more than 600 plants with a total capacity of
over 4.5 GWp. The company’s core competencies are plant condition
monitoring, power plant control, remote plant supervision, system
migration of existing power plants, operation & maintenance, and PV
asset management. skytron energy is headquartered in Berlin, Germany,
and has operations in Plano, Texas; Santiago, Chile; Cape Town, South
Africa; Bangalore, India; Singapore and Beijing, China. As a technology
leader, skytron energy has received a number of prestigious awards, such
as the highly coveted InterSolar Award for the “PVGuard” Supervision
Platform and for the “StringGuard” string current measurement system.
For further information please visit www.skytron-energy.com
