SoDa:: Services for Professionals in Solar Energy and Radiation

Case Studies - Solar Energy Systems

Solar energy in Africa. The SoDa Service has been associated to the activities of the Group for Earth
Observation (GEO) thanks to the efforts made by the International Energy Agency (SHC Task 36). The GEO was initiated by the G8. It gathers approx. 70 nations (including the European Commission). The GEO identified nine "benefital social areas". One of them is energy. NASA and Ecole des Mines de Paris / Armines promoted a success story in this domain, which is one of the 30 success stories to be shown to the ministerial council for all nine domains. Videos were prepared for the GEO plenary session and ministerial summit held in Cape Town in November 2007. The success story shows four real cases achievements in Africa exploiting solar energy. The design of these systems was made possible by exploiting the SoDa Service, that permits itself to combine the databases SSE and HelioClim from NASA and Armines / Ecole des Mines de Paris. Date: November 2007.

Solar energy in the Balkans. Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI) is the largest Croatian research centre in sciences and science applications. It uses maps of solar radiation in the Balkans created from the service Soda-HelioClim-1 provided by Ecole des Mines in the framework of the RISE project supported by the European Commission. These maps are much more accurate than the previous ones that resulted from interpolation of point measurements. The Rudjer Boskovic Institute helps local municipalities of Croatia in taking decision to invest in renewable energy systems for producing electricity in isolated sites. Date: July 2006.

Interest of satellite data in rural electrification. The German company Lahmeyer International provides the whole range of technologies and services with regard to energy infrastructure development and infrastructure improvement. Mathieu Sarran writes “Our consulting activties in rural electrification by means of solar energy request accurate data on solar radiation. In Africa, such data are inexistent in under-developed regions. Accordingly, Lahmeyer International install itself measuring stations. This induces costs and presence of local teams for data collection and maintenance. The availability of radiation data assessed from satellite images by the école des mines de Paris that can be accesssed through the SoDa Service is a real advantage for our company. The first benefit is that they are available at any site: there are more data than Lahmeyer International can install stations. The second benefit is that archives are available instantaneously while our measuring stations should work two full years before delivering a consistent and reliable time-series. Advantages are evident: fast access to information, reliability of information, large geographical coverage, dramatic decrease of costs for study and planning. By exploiting these data, Lahmeyer International can realise projects quicker, in a manner more reliable, more complete and more competitively. These advantages benefit also to the customers of Lahmeyer International since the studies cost less and are realised quicker". Date: January 2006.

Sales of electricity produced by solar power. BKW FMB Energy Ltd. is a Swiss company supplying energy to one million people in around 400 communities in Switzerland. In 2004 BKW supplied over 6'900 Gigawatt-hours of energy to private customers and distribution partners. BKW produces energy from hydro, nuclear, solar and wind power plants and is the principal partner in Switzerland's largest alternative energy production plants (Mont Soleil solar energy plant, Juvent wind power plant and the Stade de Suisse solar power plant). Yvonne Dauwalder uses monthly sums of irradiation provided by SoDa as part of a monthly report about key factors influencing electricity sales to small and medium-sized businesses. Quoting Yvonne "thank you very much for the extensive SoDa Services, it is very convenient to use with detailed explanations and most amazingly, it is for free. It truly is one of a kind on the web!". Date: May 2005.