We are working on improving our smart meter service and want to integrate solar PV forecasting. @richard has some models for this, and would like to compare it to actual data from members’ panels to check that it is accurate.
If you have solar panels and have access to high-resolution information about their generation please let me know. Using this we will be able to check the accuracy of our modelling.
If anyone is interested in how this would be useful to people I am happy to have that conversation here as well.
If you know how to get the data out of my SolarEdge inverter account then you can have it! I can’t see CSV export or anything, but I can give you my API key…?
Thanks Tom, and welcome to the Carbon Co-op community!
I think it should be possible to get that data from the SolarEdge API if you are able to direct message me the your key or email it me at matt.franklin[at]carbon.coop that would be great.
I don’t know if you currently have a smart meter, but if you do you might be interested our service (expect to see some improvements in the next few months!).
We hope that the having a good model to forecast solar generation can be used to help people plan their energy use as well as help give people a more accurate picture of their energy use.
what do you mean by high resolution?
In en10ergy we have a portal with generation data from two schools. For one we did comprehensive modelling before the installation against sunshine hours to confirm that we wouldn’t export kWh, even in the summer break.
Interested in what you are wanting to do re smart meters. Domestic or Commercial installations?
That is a good question Charles! Ideally we are looking for ≥ half-hourly generation data. We don’t necessarily need the data from a lot of sites, it is more to confirm our models are accurate.
Our service is available for anyone with a smart meter (although currently limited to Carbon Co-op members), but we are primarily focussing on domestic use.
I am not familiar with Energy Sparks, but if your school has a smart meter installed it might be worth giving it a go with the our service above (it might not work though). If it does and you have a separate export MPAN I would definitely be interested in hearing more about the set-up and whether we can get it working with our system.
Hi Matt
I am vice chair of en10ergy in North London and we have installations on two schools with solar panels, Orsis meters and use the Orsis portal.
One has 2 meters, one for generation and one for export (always 0) and the other school just has one for generation. I think the reports are just daily figures, though perhaps Orsis could pull more frequent.
I also own a house in Wales with solar panels and use Octopus for an Agile Outgoing tariff. I get copious pdf bills with half hour export kWh (and market rate) figures. Although they clearly have this data from our smart meter they don’t have a portal to analyse it. I do have a Hildebrand system with a Shine portal - but that doesn’t do export either.
If you’d like any of this data my email is charlesmachynys@btinternet.com (btw Charles is surname, Sydney is first name)
Thanks Sydney! I will definitely send you some follow-up questions, in the next couple of days since we might be able to help you access your half-hourly data on a live feed and I am interested to see if we can get the same for export data.
Hi Matt,
I can send you some data from my SolarEdge inverter or from my Powerwall, or come to think of it both. Powerwall does 5 minute samples. How long a sample would you want?
robin
Thanks @rdedw. It looks like we are going to be able to get the data we need!
Since the irradiance data we are using is not historical and is forecast, what we are going to do is run our model with the forecast data over a 2 week period (quite soon) for the locations of people who have offered the data. Then I will get back in touch with you all to ask for the actual data for that same period so we can check the accuracy of our model.
So I will be in touch this week via direct message to collect your locations, and then when we have run the modelling I will get back in touch to get the corresponding data for the time period.
Thanks everyone who has offered their detailed information. I think this definitely should get us what we need. If you would like to help us out we will need a little bit more information about your set-ups to run our models.
I have created this Google Form with a few questions that will help us get started. If you are keen to offer support please fill this in.
We will make sure to keep you up-to-date on any outcomes!
It looks like I can get that from my Sunny Boy inverter via the Oxley Solar app.
I don’t know how far back the data set goes, but of you can details what you want I’ll explore the expiry options.
I’m also keen to find a decent solar forecaster. I use PV Analyser to get an idea of potential generation over the next couple of days, but it’s not ideal
Thanks Simon, I think we have all the data that we need at the moment and are currently doing some of the analysis work. The goal of this is that we will be able to provide high quality solar forecasting and associated integrations through our services (such as the Energy Usage Visualiser and the HEMS). Obviously there is still a lot of work to do before we are there, but we hope that this will be a valuable tool for users.
Also thanks for sharing that App. What would you say is not ideal about it? Just so that we can see what we can learn to improve!
We will definitely keep people updated as this project progresses and when we have some useful results!
The PV Solar Forecast (I think I called it something else above) is the best app I could find so far, but not ideal.
I want to know how much solar to expect, especially during summer, in order to decide whether to charge our EV vs. running the house. We need over 1.5kW to be able to charge the car, so I want to check what today and tomorrow are going to give us from our panels.
##PV Solar Forecast Pros
The app does some calculations based on location, roof angle and orientation, so adjusts for angle of incidence etc.
It allows some calibration, to adjust the estimates based on you actual solar generation.
It provides a 3 day daily forecast in kWh
It offers a current output.
##PV Solar Forecast Cons
Annoyingly, it doesn’t provide any historical data, so it isn’t possible to assess the predictions against what you actually generated.
The UI is almost overwhelmed by advertising, sadly.
Bizarrely, it doesn’t provide a total for Today, only an hour by hour breakdown, so it’s hard to know what to expect without adding up all the hourly values
Thanks that is all really useful information and I hope that we can integrate some of these features into our service and as you mention some of the decisions on that app are quite strange, so hopefully we can try to improve upon that.
Yes looking forward to the next stages on this. It would be good to add PV forecast for next 24hrs so that I/we could automate when to take advantage of off-peak elec (for storage of various types) but only when we know that tomorrow likely to be cloudy/insufficient PV generation to potentially fill the intended storage.
