Digital weather data supporting the operation and maintenance of PV power plants

Traditional PV power plant transactions are very costly, and the technical due diligence involved is very time-consuming. Now, though, the era of on-site inspection may be over. With the help of MAP, digitalisation could revolutionise this field of work.

Ryan Xiao, Gordon Ge and Taiyu Peng from the Renewables OBS of TÜV NORD Hangzhou have good reasons to be happy: They have obtained a utility model patent for their MAP (Meteorology Acquisition Platform). This collects critical operation and meteorological data at PV power plants. “We’ve taken a big step toward digitalising our services,” says Gordon Ge.

As the first research product of TÜV NORD Hangzhou, various functional modules can be integrated into MAP, such as the monitoring of PV module power, combiner boxes and irradiance, meteorological monitoring, dust occlusion monitoring, inverter and meter monitoring, and more. “This means that we’ve created a new inspection mode – digital and intelligent inspection instead of the traditional way of doing things,” says Gordon Ge.

With the MAP cloud system and the classical evaluation model and algorithm of the MAP team, more and more results can now be calculated remotely. This reduces the manpower in on-site testing and adds to the possible range of inspection methods.

Up to now, the MAP service has been deployed in over 150 PV power plants in China. This service has been approved by the industry and achieved a promising degree of success. TÜV NORD Hangzhou signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Sungrow (the world’s leading provider of PV inverters) for the digital inspection application at Intersolar 2018.

The ultimate goal of MAP is to become a global application service and to improve the safety of PV power plants.