Statistical Validation and Power Modelling of Hourly Profiles for a Large-Scale Photovoltaic Plant Portfolio

In the last decades, the number of photovoltaic (PV) generators significantly increased over the world. An accurate analysis of the massive data gathered from the meters of the PV plants can improve the management of their intermittent generation. This paper presents a methodology to analyse the production profiles of a portfolio of thousands of PV plants installed in an Italian region. The procedure faces the problem of filtering poor and incomplete data, then uses a stratified sampling technique for the statistical validation of the remaining profiles. Finally, the checked production profiles are used to adjust the energy model to better match the measured data and calculate the whole PV portfolio production.