Page 73 - CARILEC CE Industry Journal_Oct_2019

METHODOLOGY This total population was considered the starting sample
set for the survey. Unfortunately only 18 Households
In March 2019 the author started a Request for reacted to the Request for information call. Only 15 of
Information process in local newspapers and on social these 18 reactions returned the survey template. A
media appealing to owners of solar energy installation to response rate of 2%. Only two commercial entities (2%)
provide operational data (from 2018) of their installation. responded to the RFI call.

Through a survey template the author collected primary The author contacted 10 commercial and industrial
technical and financial data and third-party production data organizations but no reactions were received. As such the
from SMA Sunny portal and then analyzed this production results of this small sample are not representative for the
data to determine the KPI’s across areas of interest. entire population, but we can still gain valuable insights
from the results. As a result of a lack of data from
The following activities were performed: commercial/industrial organizations the author decided to
1 Preparation of survey template; restrict the analysis to household only.
2 Survey Implementation;
3 Data gathering; Survey Implementation
4 Building a model;
5 Analysis of the data; The primary goal of the survey was to obtain monthly
6 Determining of KPI’s; financial data from utility bill, the installed capacity and
7 Preparing the report. yearly energy production kWh of the PV system. Please
refer to Table 12 for the survey template.
Data Types and Sources
Meteorological department Curaçao
Data sources regarding solar energy are sparingly or not
publicly available on the island. The regulator and local Solar radiation data are a fundamental input for solar
utility were not willing to provide operational data citing energy applications such as photovoltaic systems for
privacy issues. electricity generation, solar collectors for heating, solar air
conditioning climate control in buildings and passive solar
Table 1 presents the data types and sources used in this devices.
evaluation
Sources of irradiance, temperature and climatic
Besides the sources mentioned below, for this report, conditions data
information and data from a wide variety of sources has
been used, which includes theoretical knowledge of solar Irradiance,, temperature and climatic conditions data are
energy technology in standard literature. available from Meteorological Department Curaçao
(MDC), or better known as Meteo Curaçao. MDC is the
data and knowledge center with respect to Meteorology,
Data type Source Purpose Seismology and Climatology, as well as the official
governmental entity to issue severe weather bulletins for
Monthly financial data Participants in survey Electricity production Curaçao.
from utility bill data used to calculate
financial KPI’s
Solar irradiance is typically quoted as W/m²/day.
Installed capacity and Participants in survey Production data to
yearly energy production kWh calculate technical KPI’s
Third-Party Production Data Sunny Portal - SMA Production data to
Installed capacity and yearly Solar Technology AG calculate technical KPI’s
energy production kWh
Irradiance and other Meteo Curaçao Data to calculate
meteo data technical KPI’s

Table 1 - Data types and sources

Monthly financial data from utility bill

A total of 757 solar PV systems were installed between
2012 and 2018. These installations are categorized as
follows: Household, Commercial and Industrial.

Table 2 - Climatic conditions data

CE INDUSTRY Journal 71