Digital Tools for Solar Thermal Plant Monitoring

Citation (API): Tschopp, D., Ohnewein, P., Feierl, L., Hamilton-Jones, M. (2024). Digital Tools for Solar Thermal Plant Monitoring. A Handbook for Plant Operators and Associated Stakeholders. Version 1.0 (June 2024). Graz, DIH Süd, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.12523699

Background: Large-scale solar thermal plants are a key technology to provide renewable heat in residential, industrial, and district heating applications with substantial growth worldwide in recent years. Increasing availability of data, performance analytics methods and digitalization technologies offer the opportunity to improve quality assurance standards of the technology. An important milestone is the release of ISO 24194 in 2022, which is the first standard of its kind to target the operating phase of solar thermal collector arrays.

• Challenge: To ensure high solar energy yields over the lifespan of the plant, digital monitoring solutions which support automated, cost-effective performance benchmarking and optimal system operation are needed. The promising developments in this field are not yet fully seized by the stakeholders, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises who operate solar thermal plants, due to a lack of awareness and accessible, target group specific information.

Aim: This handbook strives to give an overview of digital tools for solar thermal plant monitoring and addresses typical data requirements and evaluation methods. The work focuses on open-source software tools. Open-source tools not only decrease licensing costs for users, but also offer the benefit of traceable and transparent outcomes, e.g., when the software is used to check performance guarantees.

• Target group: The handbook mainly targets plant operators of large-scale solar thermal plants, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and additionally associated stakeholders like system designers, collector manufacturers, quality assurance institutions, investors and heat costumers. 
• Scope: The presented digital tools are geared towards large-scale applications, mainly for systems using non-concentrating flat plate collectors, with a focus on the collector array (primary loop). One open-source tool, the SunPeek software, is presented in detail. The authors do not claim completeness of the selected tools nor any preference which tools are most suitable.

Structure: The handbook consists of 4 chapters: 

• Chapter 1 summarizes the required measurement setup and data handling.
• Chapter 2 introduces common methods and key figures used in digital tools.
• Chapter 3 gives an overview of digital tools and open data sets.
• Chapter 4 introduces the SunPeek software, which implements the ISO 24194 Power Check.

Previous work: The handbooks integrates on-going work and discussions with experts from IEA SHC Task 68, and strongly builds on the projects HarvestIT and MeQuSo.

Acknowledgements: This handbook was supported and made available by DIH (Digital Innovation Hub) Süd in collaboration with the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund (FFG 884622, DIH.03-23.AF.098-01). The authors would like to express their gratitude to the SunPeek developers for their valuable contributions to this work.