PV Performance Modeling Collaborative Workshop explores PV technical challenges and opportunities

Sandia National Laboratories, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and European Energy co-organized and hosted the 2024 PV Performance Modeling Collaborative (PVPMC) Workshop in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 21 – 23, 2024. The three-day event focused on research and development to increase the accuracy and technical rigor of PV performance models and analysis. Participants had the opportunity to explore the technical challenges and opportunities related to PV performance modeling and analytics. 

“The power of this workshop is that it brings together researchers from academia, government labs and industry to solve real world problems that are affecting the clean energy transition today,” said Marios Theristis, Sandia PV researcher and principal investigator for PV performance modeling. “It is not uncommon that solutions proposed in these workshops end up in commercial software and industry standards in the future.”

Workshop sessions explored PV monitoring methods and system underperformance, modeling methods and software, agrivoltaics (combining PV with agriculture), a pvlib-python tutorial, a poster session and a DTU site visit. Special sessions focused on PV plant operations and management (O&M) practices, fault detection and classification and power curtailment. 

Sandia and co-organizers CFV Labs and Groundwork Renewables will host the next PVPMC workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 13 – 15, 2025. 

Sandia National Laboratories facilitates the PV Performance Modeling Collaborative (PVPMC) to provide greater confidence in the accuracy of performance models, which can lead to lower financing costs and increase the number of projects built.  

Be sure to check out the #PVPMC hashtag on LinkedIn to read the enthusiastic mentions written by attendees.