Solargis provides data for Apex Clean Energy’s 10GW U.S. solar portfolio

Apex Clean Energy is a leading independent power producer in the U.S., with over 30GW in its diversified renewables portfolio. Apex develops, constructs, operates, and owns utility-scale wind, solar, energy storage, and green fuels facilities across North America.

Apex conducts a robust project design and optimization phase to identify the optimal efficacy of solar technologies for inverters, racking, modules, and energy storage. This often leads to technologically complex projects which pair the best products available in line with constructability constraints and market opportunity.

New technologies such as bifacial and storage are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., offering a step change in operational efficiency through the sector. However, solar stakeholders are navigating fresh uncertainty around hardware tariffs and significant global supply chain volatility, driving asset owners to use these technologies effectively to add value to their portfolios.

According to the NREL, bifacial modules – which generate electricity on both sides of the panel – may already comprise up to 50% of installed U.S. capacity. There have been question marks around the industry’s capability to utilize innovative module designs fully.

Storage is another strong area of growth for the solar sector, holding the key to a wider roll out of photovoltaic technology. At present, there are still issues around managing charge and discharge cycles in a coordinated way with regard to the interconnection limits, market power prices, and grid congestion.

The effective integration of bifacial solar projects and solar plus storage has been hampered by a lack of high-quality albedo data – a measure of reflectance – and accurate sub-hourly time series data. This may lead to widespread underperformance, reducing investor confidence in the technologies.

Apex Clean Energy has deployed high-resolution, granular resource and meteorological data from Solargis to optimize over 120 of its solar projects during design, development, and operations. Throughout these processes, Apex also utilized horizon data provided by Solargis’ Solar Prospect tool to track and map project locations.

To better integrate advanced technologies such as bifacial and storage, Apex Clean Energy has bolstered its bifacial projects with Solargis’ extensively validated albedo data, measuring surface reflectivity and ensuring optimal designs and efficient operations. To optimize its storage assets, it has invested in one and five minute data provided by Solargis to support seamless battery operations and improved grid integration.

Giridaran Srinivasan, Solargis’ CEO for the Americas, said: “Rising transparency around crucial project decisions means U.S. renewable investors are scrutinizing financial projections rigorously. We have been consistently impressed by Apex Clean Energy’s robust data use of high-quality data and commitment to accuracy over the two years we’ve worked together, and we look forward to supporting the wider U.S. solar sector as it takes a leap forward and adopts a best practice approach to solar resource data.”