The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF) is a project organized under open-source principles, which is a fully grid-connected test system that continuously monitors the output of many solar photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of highly accurate meteorological readings.
History
As the solar photovoltaic industry grows, there is an increased demand for high-quality research in solar systems design and optimization in realistic (and sometimes extreme) outdoor environments such as in Canada. To answer this need, a partnership has formed the Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF). The OSOTF was originally developed with a strong partnership between the Queen's Applied Sustainability Research Group run by Joshua M. Pearce at Queen's University (now at Michigan Tech) and the Sustainable Energy Applied Research Centre (SEARC) at St. Lawrence College headed by Adegboyega Babasola.This collaboration has grown rapidly to include multiple industry partners, and the OSOTF has been redesigned to provide critical data and research for the team.
The OSOTF is a fully grid-connected test system, which continuously monitors the output of over 100 photovoltaic modules and correlates their performance to a long list of highly accurate meteorological readings. The teamwork has resulted in one of the largest systems in the world for this detailed level of analysis, and can provide valuable information on the actual performance of photovoltaic modules in real-world conditions. Unlike many other projects, the OSOTF is organized under open source principles.
All data and analysis when completed will be made freely available to the entire photovoltaic community and the general public.
The first project for the OSOTF quantifies the losses due to snowfall of a solar photovoltaic system, generalizes these losses to any location with weather data and recommends best practices for system design in snowy climates.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Open Solar Outdoors Test Field” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.