Inion Software unveils PV plant short-term performance forecasting, diagnostic platform

inion team on a solar rooftop

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Lithuania-based Inion Software has launched a new platform suitable for PV plants up to 2 GW. It claims to deliver improved analytics and asset insights to enable productivity and profitability improvements based on the developers’ idea that merely relying on performance data from equipment inside the plant, such as inverters, is not enough to uncover technical issues, environmental influences, or underperforming PV plant equipment.

The solution has both a forecasting and diagnostic functionality. “If the model predicts a higher amount of energy than the system produced, then the team can dig deeper into the data indexed and stored in the platform to find out why shortfalls occur,” Robertas Janickas, Chief Technology Officer at Inion Software told pv magazine, adding that shortfalls can be caused by faults in the solar power plant, soiling, or environmental factors, for example.

The software relies on statistical models, deep learning, and machine learning technology to process data generated by PV plant hardware, such as inverters, power plant controllers (PPC), and data loggers. Additionally, weather data parameters, such as temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and sun position from multiple meteorological data can be used to determine the most accurate forecasts.

Furthermore, the productivity of nearby solar power plants can be accessed to make comparisons with similar sites. “We have a client that discovered exactly how much revenue they were missing out on when two out of three of their identical power plants were underperforming in the early morning hours compared to the third one, even though they were located near each other,” explained Janickas.

The platform is available on a subscription basis from Inion Software or via its distribution partners.

Customers include Romania-based solar plant developer Volter, Spanish photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) panel maker Abora Solar, Lithuanian module manufacturer Solitek, and Ecooo Revolución Solar, a Spanish community solar plant developer.

The company was founded in 2019 to focus on products for solar power plant operators, such as data loggers, the Inion analytics platform, and a battery management system, which extends the capabilities of standard battery storage solutions. “The key feature of all our products is they are made to outperform the existing tools. For example, most data loggers take reading every 5 minutes. Ours track the status every 60 seconds,” said Janickas.

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