candi solar optimizes portfolio performance with Solargis Monitor

candi solar

Highlights

Region

India and Africa

Product

Solargis Monitor

Service function

Performance monitoring and reporting

Outcome

Optimize cost and technology portfolio to meet contract requirements and maximize revenue

About candi solar

candi solar partners with businesses to provide zero-risk, end-to-end solar and battery solutions, made possible through flexible financing customized to clients.

Having tripled its installation base in 2022, candi plans to incorporate an additional 1 GWp of generation capacity into its portfolio.

To sustain a viable growth trajectory, candi has turned to Solargis to provide accurate irradiation data that will enable them to meet expected returns on investment across their projects.

The Challenge

The asset management team at candi is responsible for optimizing the performance of their solar assets, ranging in capacity from 20 kWp to up to 4 MWp.

In addition to achieving budgeted revenue targets, the team’s secondary goal is to optimize costs through investment in technology and innovation.

Previously, candi relied solely on on-site pyranometers to measure the solar resource for its operational projects. However, these ground-based measurements can be susceptible to inaccuracies. candi recognized considerable deviations between the measured solar resource data at their 200kWp to 1MW operational projects and their budgeted resource data, which is a key component of their budgeted production and revenues.

This led to two key issues:

  1. Uncertainty around the accuracy of on-site sensors
  2. Concerns surrounding how the operation of those sensors might affect the reliability of production and revenue calculations

Gianni Ruch, Head of Asset Management at candi solar, said: "We were struggling to meet the operational requirements of our project portfolio due to accuracy issues with our sensors."

candi decided to validate their sensors with high-quality satellite data and turned to Solargis to meet this requirement.

The Solution

Solargis Monitor provided candi with comprehensive high-frequency solar resource data, enabling them to benchmark measurements from their on-site sensors against reliable satellite readings, revealing deviations between sensor readings and actual project performance.

Solargis’ intra-day high-resolution data was used to validate project models and data across candi’s portfolio and highlight potential project underperformance.

Gianni added: "With Solargis’ highly accurate and reliable data, validation of the solar resource can be done easily. We were able to see that our sensors were generating measurements that were roughly 5% lower than the actual output."

"Solargis’ bankable and credible data underpins our decision-making throughout the project lifecycle." Gianni Ruch, Head of Asset Management

The Outcome

Solargis’ highly accurate resource data, delivered through Monitor, helped to create a robust platform for candi to better understand the performance of its projects against expectations.

This enabled the business to:

  1. Optimize and manage the technological performance of solar assets to avoid misallocating project losses.
  2. Meet contractual requirements around revenue generation and value budgeting.

Irradiation data inputs for candi’s monthly management reporting are now based entirely on data from Solargis instead of on-site irradiation measurements.

Gianni mentioned: "Solargis’ bankable and credible data underpins our decision-making throughout the project lifecycle, creating confidence for our stakeholders from development to operation."

More about candi solar

candi solar partners with businesses to offer end-to-end solar and battery solutions.

Our approach is flexible, enabling us to tailor the offering to your exact needs, and our shared value model means we're invested for the long run to ensure you reap the full rewards.

Underpinned by our global expertise in financing, quality engineering and data-enabled asset management, our unique mix of strengths allow us to take all the risk of going solar, so you don't have to.