Solar Analytics: Monitoring for Better Energy Outcomes
- $2.14m Funded by ARENA
- $9.76m Total project cost
Summary
The project aims to accelerate deployment of an Australian-developed technology designed to monitor the performance of residential solar PV systems and provide low cost analytics and fault diagnostics.
The technology compares energy generation against performance expectations, reporting system data back to the residential user, while also identifying faults and providing corrective actions.
Key results
- The project increased the availability and affordability of active rooftop solar monitoring services to more than 40,000 Australian solar owners, giving them the opportunity to visualise and optimise their solar energy production and energy usage.
- The project spearheaded the movement towards providing insights and information directly to the solar owner about their solar system, to help them better manage it and increase financial return.
- Active performance monitoring increased solar generation by 14% (or an average of $132 p.a. for residential customers) due to faster fault detection and rectification.
- By monitoring both solar generation and electricity consumption, residential customers also saved up to $350 p.a. by shifting their loads to times of high solar generation.
Learn more
Report: Monitoring for Better Energy Outcomes Final Report
This is the final report for Solar Analytics’ Monitoring for Better Energy Outcomes project.
Report: Monitoring for Better Energy Lessons Learnt Report
This report shares lessons learnt from Solar Analytics’ Monitoring for Better Energy Outcomes project.
Presentation: Solar Analytics
This presentation was given by Jonathon Dore from Solar Analytics at the ARENA Insights Forum on 30 November 2018.
Need
The project will demonstrate the cost/benefit of monitoring and analytics for delivering optimised energy yields for homeowners, solar retailers, installers and retail PPA providers.
Project innovation
The technology differs from other monitoring software on the market in that it is able to integrate with any solar system hardware, it targets the residential PV market rather than utility scale (via a materially lower cost point), and provides detailed analytics on actual solar generation in addition to household energy usage monitoring.
Benefit
The residential rooftop solar monitoring technology has the potential to:
- Improve the yield of PV systems and effectively decrease the LCOE of rooftop PV;
- Reduce barriers to renewable energy uptake, by reducing the risk of financing systems;
- Collect data which will contribute towards reducing knowledge gaps for a range of industry partners and researchers.
ARENAWIRE Blogs
Solar monitoring benefiting households and networks
The solar monitoring service can deliver hundreds of dollars in annual savings for households and reduce strain on the grid.
