Tigo Energy and Folsom Labs announced that DNV GL (formerly BEW Engineering) has validated that HelioScope performance modeling software correctly models the energy yield benefit of Tigo Energy’s Smart Module solution for solar arrays.
“Having a DNV approved tool that demonstrates the energy gains using Tigo’s technology in a truly bankable way is a major step forward for the smart module market and specifically our smart module partners,” says Tim Kubes, VP of North America for Tigo Energy. “This allows installers and developers to model the ROI of solar systems with smart modules and communicate these benefits to the system owners in a language that banks and financiers understand.”
To assess the validity of HelioScope for modeling Tigo Energy’s technology, DNV:
-Analyzed the modeling approach and methodology used by HelioScope for shading, mismatch, and Tigo optimizer performance
-Compared HelioScope to PVsyst at every step in the performance modeling loss-tree ensuring that results are consistent with current bankable modeling standards.
In the report, DNV concluded: “HelioScope is a novel modeling tool for investigating the energy generating performance of PV systems even when subject to non-ideal solar access. It demonstrates agreement with PVSyst modeling results to within 1%, and appears to combine multiple shading effects to achieve consistent results relative to PVSyst.”
“We built HelioScope specifically to enable designers to evaluate decisions with an eye towards new technologies,” says Folsom Labs CEO Paul Gibbs. “By fully modeling every component in the system individually, HelioScope calculates both the performance and bill-of-material impacts from using Tigo-enabled smart modules.”
Tigo Energy’s smart module partners and their customers can immediately take advantage of HelioScope’s design software. Tigo’s partners today include such manufacturers as Trina Solar, Upsolar, Lightway, Luxor, and Silfab among others. “HelioScope provides us a great tool to model the energy harvest benefits of Trinasmart optimized by Tigo Energy,” said Jing Tian Director of Marketing for Trina North America. “Our customers can now accurately and bankably model Trinasmart with this third party, DNV-approved software. This allows them to gain a more tangible understanding of the energy yield improvement of Trinasmart technology.”
In addition to the bankability validation work, customers have also been doing their own assessment. PsomasFMG, one of the leading North American developers in commercial solar installations also evaluated HelioScope using a real-world Tigo system. “We have been monitoring one of our projects using Tigo Energy’s Smart Module technology for over year and have compared it to the HelioScope results” said Gail Sandford COO of Psomas FMG. “We were able to use HelioScope to predict the energy output of the Tigo Energy Smart Modules to within 0.26% of their real-world measured output. We are satisfied that the HelioScope solution works and will give us a bankable tool when proposing future Tigo Energy optimized smart module projects.”
Want more? Try these articles:
Why You Should Consider Smart Modules For Your Next Solar Project
Solar Works In The Antarctic And For Santa