Global SunFarm data acquisition network, energy CRADLE, and time series analysis

Abstract

Abstract-Outdoor testing of photovoltaic (PV) modules plays a critical role in discovering the degradation modes, mechanisms and rates of materials, components and systems under real world climate conditions. The Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension (SDLE) center at Case Western Reserve University has established a highly instrumented outdoor test facility, the SDLE SunFarm. In order to study PV module performance under different climatic conditions, a global SunFarm network was established with nine PV outdoor test beds across the world. Energy CRADLE is an ontology driven database acquisition tool which is being developed to effectively store, analyze and query huge data sets generated by the SunFarms. The data collected from all these data sources will stream back to a MySQL database. A front end user interface was built for the purpose of data inquiry, equipment registration, maintenance, and metrology cross check. Design and characteristics of SunFarms are introduced. SunFarm informatics and two case studies will be discussed in this article.

Transformative Opportunities from Data Science and Big Data Analytics: Applied to Photovoltaics

“…We developed an outdoor test facility in Cleveland, OH, with 148 modules from 20 brands purchased on the open market. 12 The time series data is ingested into a non-relational database based on Hadoop, Hbase, and Spark called CRADLE (Fig. 1).…”

Microinverter Thermal Performance in the Real-World: Measurements and Modeling

“…The power data was automatically acquired from the Enphase enlighten website using the Java Selenium web driver package and stored in SDLE Center’s local file-store. Later, all these data: power, insolation, temperature and climate, were ingested into SDLE center’s informatics and analytics infrastructure, known as Energy CRADLE [ 41 ]. Data visualization and analytics in this manuscript were generated using ‘R’ open-source software [ 42 , 43 ].…”

Predictive linear regression model for microinverter internal temperature

“…The study will be further pursued to study the thermal behavior of microinverters in fixed-rack system and roof top systems which will allow us to compare the thermal characteristics of microinverters in different setup. SDLE SunFarm is a part of a global SunFarm network [5,6]. Under this SunFarm network, similar experiment will be setup in different SunFarms of different climate zones.…”