Improving the Accuracy of PV Yield Calculation by Exploitation of Real Weather Data

The precision of yield calculation of modern design and simulation software for photovoltaic systems strongly rely, beside the accuracy of the specified module and inverter data, on the quality of the weather data. Since data from weather stations is not available for most locations world-wide this data is calculated by using modern interpolation methods. Beside this, simulation software typically uses historical weather data. In this work the mismatch of yield simulation results based on proprietary data, meaning interpolated or also called synthetical data, and data coming from a weather station in proximity to the installation is evaluated. The simulated data sets are compared to measurement data as obtained by the inverter output and hence give a profound understanding how interpolated data may influence the simulation results. The outcome shows that the quality of the yield simulation, if compared to the measurement data, is increased by a factor of up to four if on-site weather data is used as input for the simulation. The largest source of deviation is irradiation, which varies up to 10% if synthetical and measured irradiation on-site is compared. The second largest sources for simulation mismatches are power calculation and module temperature correction.