Swinerton Renewable Energy uses Orion weather station to monitor solar power arrays
Swinerton Renewable Energy has selected weather stations from Columbia Weather Systems to provide meteorological data to their proprietary SCADA system at solar project sites. The construction company offers turn-key solar power solutions for utility-scale and distributed generation projects.
Joe Brotherton, manager of the technical services team, reports that Swinerton’s operations and maintenance management offers performance guarantees based on site analysis. Monitoring weather conditions is vital to optimizing performance. Swinerton’s weather stations include the Orion sensor module plus a panel temperature sensor and two solar radiation sensors – one at plane of array and the other on a tracker. The system is connected through the Weather MicroServer. “We like the price point, always get a response, and it integrates easily into our SCADA system,” Brotherton says.
On a recent Swinerton project, Columbia Weather integrated the newly released Hukseflux SR20 solar sensor. SR20 is a pyranometer of the highest category in the ISO 9060 classification system: secondary standard. This solar radiation sensor is used where the highest measurement accuracy is required. The weather station utilizes an Acromag amplifier to amplify the solar sensor output to higher voltages suitable to CWS’s Microserver inputs and applies individual sensors’ sensitivities. The Acromag also includes programmable relay control to turn on and off sensor heaters to minimize the effect of dew and ice, especially critical in this Ontario, Canada solar panel installation.
Joe Brotherton, manager of the technical services team, reports that Swinerton’s operations and maintenance management offers performance guarantees based on site analysis. Monitoring weather conditions is vital to optimizing performance. Swinerton’s weather stations include the Orion sensor module plus a panel temperature sensor and two solar radiation sensors – one at plane of array and the other on a tracker. The system is connected through the Weather MicroServer. “We like the price point, always get a response, and it integrates easily into our SCADA system,” Brotherton says.
On a recent Swinerton project, Columbia Weather integrated the newly released Hukseflux SR20 solar sensor. SR20 is a pyranometer of the highest category in the ISO 9060 classification system: secondary standard. This solar radiation sensor is used where the highest measurement accuracy is required. The weather station utilizes an Acromag amplifier to amplify the solar sensor output to higher voltages suitable to CWS’s Microserver inputs and applies individual sensors’ sensitivities. The Acromag also includes programmable relay control to turn on and off sensor heaters to minimize the effect of dew and ice, especially critical in this Ontario, Canada solar panel installation.
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