So, you've installed an expensive device to measure wind speed or solar irradiance at your new site. Now, what do you do with all the data rolling in? Can you be confident everything is working optimally? Can you easily spot issues that might affect your project's success? How do you ensure you're getting the most out of your investment? And wouldn't it be great to quickly create attractive plots and graphs for your reports and presentations?
Data Management Problems
Let’s talk about some common problems. As analysts, we’ve seen projects where data goes missing for days or even months. Sometimes, sensors get damaged or fail gradually, leading to poor data quality. These issues often stem from problems with the measurement device or communication glitches with the data logger, and they can go unnoticed if data isn’t regularly and expertly monitored.
When it comes to project financing or transactions, missing or poor-quality data can significantly impact the accuracy and uncertainty of energy yield assessments. This, in turn, affects your return on investment in the site measurement campaign and the overall value of your project.
Introducing Meteor
Loss of value due to sub-optimal data quality is an issue we see commonly as experts in the renewable energy sector, even in well planned wind and solar sites. It’s something we wanted to get to the bottom of, but we knew it would require the development of a specific, specialist service to address the issue. As a result, we designed the Meteor wind and solar data management software platform that forms the core of our service. The platform securely stores data from measurement devices, ready for easy review, analysis and download.
Meteor Overview
Wind and solar measurement devices generally send data to whoever is the owner of the device. These measurement devices are sometimes very remote, and things can go wrong with them such as lightning strikes, vandalism, or just the instruments becoming faulty. Commonly, physical checks of the data from these devices don’t happen regularly, so any faults lead to gaps in data. This is where our Meteor service helps. Meteor securely stores our client’s data files, presents the data in useful plots and graphs, and daily checks of the data are performed by expert wind analysts to identify, and proactively report, any issues with measurement devices as they happen.
Naturally, this prevents the big problem of unintentionally collecting several weeks or months of data that is erroneous and unusable for project bankability. With Meteor, our clients simply configure their measurement device(s) to send a daily email containing the data to K2 Management’s designated email address. The data is then securely processed, stored, and available for their perusal in the Meteor system. K2 Managements expert wind and solar analysts will also begin performing their daily checks. It is as simple as that.
Benefits and Features
The daily data checks performed by experienced analysts are central to the value provided by the K2 Management Meteor Service. Our analysts use wind and solar data in Energy Yield Assessments themselves and can therefore identify gaps or trends that pose an issue to the integrity of your dataset. Any issues we identify are proactively reported to you as soon as possible.
With its user-friendly interface, data in Meteor is thoughtfully plotted so that these issues can be illustrated to clients. Similarly, mean wind speed, wind roses and frequency distributions are calculated and presented for quick, ad-hoc project viability checks. All data can be easily downloaded as raw data or CSV file for the period a client requires.
Table of Meteor Readings
We wanted to ensure that Meteor not only stores data securely but also keeps all related documentation safe and easily accessible. Need to investigate a specific month or year? Our clients can filter this data to display only what they are interested in. And, sharing data with a turbine manufacturer or other third parties are just as simple - send an invitation email, and they can access the data they need.
Meteor Vane Correlations
We are pleased to know that many of our clients have found K2 Management’s Meteor Service to be extremely beneficial particularly due to the daily checks from our analysts. With 110 active devices on Meteor, currently spanning 18 countries, we are looking forward to onboarding more clients and systems in the coming months.
Meteor wind rose and frequency distribution
You can watch a short demo here:
If you’d like to get in touch for a more detailed demonstration, or to find out more about how we can help you maximise your project's value, email: info@k2management.com
Written by Albert Feore, Analyst, Analysis Services. Click here to download our brochure: