Providing actionable insights for RTR's 332 MW portfolio

RTR is a leading Italian energy company that was set up in 2010. It has a total of 30 industry experts and it is 100% owned by Terra Firma, a private equity firm. RTR is responsible for the asset management, performance assessment and O&M coordination of its portfolio of 132 solar PV plants at different locations in Italy accounting for a total of 332 MW power. 35 of its largest PV plants make a total of 250 MW. Thanks to its innovative attitude, RTR quickly established itself as a leader in asset management in the Italian market and it is looking to further expand its business operations.

Before the start of the collaboration with Solargis, RTR didn’t have an independent source of meteo data to analyze inter-annual variability in energy production. Therefore, evaluation and forecasting of monthly production were challenging. Another challenge was to manage a large solar resource measurement network, consisting of hundreds of silicon (reference) cells and pyranometers, and to confirm the reliability of these measurements. The third challenge was to understand differences in performance of PV power plants within the same region and how microclimate and local effects contribute to these differences. In order to doublecheck whether every PV system produced as much as it should have produced, RTR’s fourth weather-related challenge was to implement monthly crosschecks between real production per powerplant and independent theoretical production.

From initial discussions with Solargis, RTR understood that the first problem can be tackled with Solargis historical data. In order to understand the range of possible inter-annual and monthly variations, they procured Solargis historical time series (23+ years of data) for all their sites. To better manage second and fourth challenge, RTR opted to receive Solargis data on regular basis - at a beginning of each month for the previous one. As a solution to the third challenge, Solargis delivers high-resolution monthly maps of solar resource and air temperature for given month and its difference to long-term average. The irradiation data are provided for both horizontal planes and for the tilt angle applicable to each specific plant.

"I appreciate detailed technical support in case we have questions after our internal evaluations"

Sandro Rosalia, technical operation manager at RTR.

Matteo and his team have identified the following key benefits of using Solargis for performance assessment:

1. RTR was able to identify the worst, average and best year in historical data (the same for Januaries, Februaries, Marches, etc) and understand the range of lowest or highest possible annual/monthly production and revenue per powerplant and portfolio.
2. RTR is able to make monthly validation of measurements from pyranometers and silicon cells before its further use in the reporting. Such validation has helped to identify improvement areas in their operation. 
3. Maps showing the monthly variability of solar resource and temperature provide great visual support in understanding effects of overall meteo conditions and microclimates on the performance of different powerplants.
4. Solargis data serve as a very good and independent benchmark for independent performance evaluation and reporting. It’s also very useful in evaluating third-party PV plants in case of M&A activities.