École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Abstract

This report deals with methodologies for estimation of solar production, as a part of solar power plants financing. Estimation of solar production, i.e. the quantity of electricity that can be produced every year,is of prime importance to evaluate the risks of a photovoltaïc project. Indeed, solar production determines the incomes of a plant as well as its nancing. However, there is no standard methodology to assess the energy that will be actually injected on the electricity network. The analysis of a real case showed signicant dierences (up to 7%) between the production values computed by three design oces that were asked to study the same project. Based on this observation, this report analyzes the errors aecting the production computation, which are mainly of two types : climatic and systemic. If the uncertainty related to the system (i.e. the power plant characteristics) seems rather dicult to reduce, it appears nevertheless that the errors due to the estimation of the solar ressource can be shortened by the collection of on-site physical measurements and/or by a careful selection of solar databases.