The official European tool will receive a facelift for Ultra-By

PVGIS, the European European Tool for Estimation for Solar Modules Production, Precision Profit. After a recent update, the system is much better suited for the most recent models of photovoltaic panels.

Many parameters must be taken into account to estimate the production (and therefore the yield) of a photovoltaic installation: sunshine, orientation and slope of modules, technology used, quality of equipment, etc. Hence the importance of a professional, an expert to perform the calculations.

But for almost twenty years, individuals have had a solution at their disposal to estimate the production of their photovoltaic panels themselves. This is the Photovoltaic geographical information system ((PVGIS), A free online tool made by the European Commission in 2007. The project was launched to support the development of renewable energy sources.

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This system is based on a lot of data such as location, weather and other information to simulate the production of an installation. It was initially only accessible in Europe, but it is now available worldwide, with the exception of the Arctic.

A tool adapted to current solar panels

Even today, the research into the performance of solar panels continues. The performance and quality of this equipment have changed over the years. Until recently, however, PVGIS was suitable for models from almost fifteen years. This year, the Common Research Center (JRC) Commission Commission did an update to align the system to current photovoltaic technologies.

Specifically, the researchers have updated the coefficients that are used to estimate the production of modules. These values ​​had not been rated since 2011 for crystalline silicon panels, and since 2010 for so-called “thin layers” models, especially those in copper-Indium loans and Cadmium-Tellurure.

Now more precise results

As part of this update, the research team carried out various tests on various technologies of photovoltaic panels, under different circumstances. According to Research results Published in the magazine Progress in photovoltaicImproving the coefficients made it possible to reduce the fault of estimates for modern panels.

For silicon panels, the average error percentage rose from 3.5 % to less than 1 %. Thin-layer modules also benefited from this improvement: the error fell from 4.9 % to 2.8 % for copper-Induumieli-Loanthority panels, and from 3.7 % to 1.65 % for people in Cadmium Tellurure.

PVGIS offers more precise results for silicon equipment. And this is good news, because this technology largely dominates the market with a share of more than 90 %. Silicon panels have their success in their best yield, which is more than 20 %, compared to around 10 to 13 % for thin layers of modules. In the coming years we can also expect that the system also corresponds to perovskiet cells, another technology that would have to equip future generations of solar panels.