Green Power Labs

Conventional wisdom holds that cost is the primary obstacle to large-scale integration of solar photovoltaic power plants into the grid, i.e., the cost per kWh is just too much more expensive than that of electricity generated by fossil fuels. However, intermittency is proving to be just as great an issue. Predictable intermittency, such as during nightfall, can be easily incorporated into grid management, but the variations due to weather are considerably more problematic.

The to-date unpredictable variation in cloud cover forces utilities to maintain a higher baseload capacity to compensate. In California alone the current annual cost of keeping that additional power generation on is 15 to 26 million dollars. There are strong regulatory drivers to increase the amount of solar energy added into the energy mix, increasing grid management costs. If we could forecast 24 hours in advance exactly how clouds will move over solar plants, we can reduce utility costs significantly and improve grid reliability. 

Green Power Labs has a solution: proprietary, state of the art solar power forecasting based on three major components:

• satellite image processing to locate current clouds
• ensemble numeric weather predictions to forecast positioning
• solar power plant modeling to project total electricity generated

Our extremely precise forecasts are delivered using the most advanced web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) toolset, enabling seamless integration into any utility power management system. This capability will amount to a $1B market for solar power forecasting by 2015, when 270 GW will have been installed globally in over 135,000 large scale PV power plants. 

Our target customers include utilities in the US and smart grid technology companies worldwide. Our primary product is a hardware/ software combination for which we charge a one-time setup fee. To obtain support, the latest upgrades and premium services, customers will also pay an annual subscription fee. To date, these contracts have averaged two years in length.  By 2015, we expect to have revenues approaching $20M. We expect breakevent in 2012.

Our team, based in Canada and Australia, has over 150 years of combined experience in this field.