A free Web-based solar power plant capacity-planning tool has been developed to offer project planners and developers, as well as governments, a means to assess the solar energy potential of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) over an area of land.

The tool was developed by thin-film solar PV company First Solar to enable developers interested in solar power to gain initial estimates and help boost the number of thin-film solar PV projects under development.

The tool took the form of an interactive map on which users could draw polygons over areas of land that would represent ground-mounted solar PV power fields. It then calculated the probable power output of the solar fields, based on the area of the fields and historical weather data for that part of the world, and produced a report that could form the basis of a proposal to develop a solar power plant.

During an online demonstration of the energy-capacity assessment tool last week, First Solar power plant systems global manager David Spieldenner said the tool aimed to provide anyone interested in solar power with a user-friendly and free means of estimating the potential for solar in their region.

It also served as a useful planning tool for city planners, developers and municipal officers investigating the development of solar, with the land area, energy output, carbon dioxide avoided and other information presented to the user for initial planning.

“The tool is easy to use, with a familiar and intuitive interface. For example, users can easily change the shape and size of the areas they designate by clicking and dragging the edges of the polygons. The tool also aggregates the power output from multiple areas, enabling planners to estimate the combined output of multiple solar power fields.

“Users can also produce a report at the click of a button and can save their projects as KMZ files, which are the de facto file standard for geospatial information,” Spieldenner added.

The First Solar energy capacity assessment tool was only an initial assessment tool and did not replace detailed energy capacity assessments, but it was hoped that it would lead to an increase in the number of solar projects in the world by making information freely available, he said.

The tool was detailed and enabled users to change details of the design - such as the density of the rows of solar receivers, which would reduce the peak energy generated, but improve output consistency owing to the panels casting less shade over one another - or change between heliostat and fixed solar panel designs. Users could use the information generated to explore the differences between PV power plant designs.

Users could change the estimated price at which they would produce power and the tool gave estimated costs of the plant and estimated revenue generated over a 25-year life-of-plant timeframe.

“The tool can provide a good estimate to users and is based on our own historical data of the solar PV power plant projects we have executed around the world. The resolution of the weather and irradiance information of the tool is a 20 km x 20 km grid across the world, including global horizontal irradiance and diffuse horizontal irradiance information, but proper assessments must be conducted to determine whether a site is suitable for solar,” Spieldenner pointed out.

The assessment tool was based on the internal tool used by First Solar consultants to provide estimates to clients. It was released at the recent 2015 World Future Energy Summit, in Abu Dhabi, and could be accessed at First Solar’s website.