Working closely with National Grid, we have derived an up to date estimate of the PV capacity deployed on the GB transmission network. Our latest estimate puts the installed capacity at 12 GWp! Since we now have improved visibility of historic capacity, we’ve re-run our historic calculations retrospectively to ensure they’re as accurate as possible.
We’ve also taken the opportunity to incorporate generation data from a new source – we’ve added ~1,100 systems monitored in real time and an additional ~22,000 systems providing data overnight. This brings our total input sample to ~1,700 real time systems and ~26,000 historic systems, which means the accuracy and reliability of PV_Live results has increased significantly. This new source of data has the added advantage of suffering much less lag before we’re able to access the data. As a result, we’re now able to present our first estimate of the half-hourly nationally-aggregated PV generation just 5 minutes after the end of the half hour!
As ever, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch or leave comments below.
00:31 GMT 21 Jul 2017
I take it that the very low figures given in “Current Conditions in Sheffield” relate to your own PV array/s; and are a result mainly as a result of Street Lighting and similar?
Hi Alex,
Yes – there’s a rather annoying floodlight on the roof so we often see small amounts of generation at night.
Jamie (Sheffield Solar Team)
Good website.
May I suggest that the Real-time data graph at https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/
is enhanced by adding the total estimated generation next to the date and time?
Thanks for the feedback.
Please email any suggestions to solar@sheffield.ac.uk or fill out this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSepWjvx8kp6k6oOhnY5cggm7CkXVMEBpBkm78mNxCrRSsz0Bg/viewform?c=0&w=1
Jamie (Sheffield Solar Team)
When is the next capacity update ?
Hi Jonathan,
We’re deriving an updated site list and cumulative capacity as we speak. We hope to implement later this week or early next week – i’ll post an updated news article when it’s ready…
Jamie (Sheffield Solar)
What does GWp! or even GWp mean?
Is it the Potential GW capacity?
If so is it after allowing for efficiency and capacity factors and what are these two factors?
Hi Carl,
GWp abbreciates: Giga Watt peak
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_power_(photovoltaic)
Hope this helps
Best wishes
Julian
Hi. Do consumer PV inverter manufacturers (SolarEdge, Solax, et al.) provide aggregated data to you? Cheers.
Hi Andrew,
apologies for the belated reply.
No.
No PV inverter manufacturers provide aggregated data to us.
Hope this helps
best wishes
Julian
Any news on a revised capacity update ?
Hi Jonathan,
Apologies for the delayed reply – the comments section of these posts is not monitored proactively – better to email us or tweet @ShefSolarF. We have updated our capacity estimates several times since this update, but we don’t always post when we do. Our latest update was in February this year – we’re due another shortly…
Jamie