Sunairio has launched software that contains high-resolution historical climate data and high-resolution future climate models to provide insight into location-specific risks. It recently raised venture capital to expand into new markets for its portfolio-oriented solar and wind software.
US software company Sunairio has developed a modeling platform that it claims provides more accurate grid reliability planning tools and portfolio management support for owners and operators of large-scale solar and wind farms.
The high-resolution historical climate data and future high-resolution climate simulations enable insights into location-specific weather and reliability risks. The claim of higher resolution applies to spatial resolution, measured up to a resolution of 50 meters, frequency of extreme weather events and temporal resolution, with hour-by-hour views and views from 5 days to 15 years.
“Weather datasets typically span less than 20 years, which is insufficient to model the risks of things like extreme weather events, or to account for the effects of climate change,” said Rob Cirincione, CEO of Sunairio. pv magazine, adding that being able to quantify risks requires high-resolution climate data that “reach further into the past” than the data and models currently used in the energy sector, and that “intelligence from global climate models” is needed when projecting to the future.
For example, conventional solar energy models often reduce variability to an annual average. “It wasn’t as important when renewable wind and solar made up only 5% of all energy sources, but that’s changing,” he explained. Understanding such risks has a “real impact on revenue and network reliability,” Cirincione emphasizes.
According to Sunairio, the software integrates with existing energy models and combines “generative artificial intelligence” and advanced statistics to predict weather patterns and climate trends. However, it is not a tool for short-term forecasting, nor is it used for the next day’s time horizon.
“Modelling grid risks requires a nuanced understanding of climate risks. Sunairio’s commercially viable network modeling solutions provide the practical tools needed to account for weather variability and climate trends as the integration of renewable energy generation accelerates,” Sunairio investor Alex Behar of Buoyant Ventures said in a statement.
Typical customers interested in using Sunairio’s probabilistic models are utility-scale developers, energy traders and reliability organizations, such as utilities and independent system operators (ISO).
The company recently announced a new project with Xcel Energy, a Minnesota-based company with 40 utility-scale wind and solar farms in the state of Colorado. The project aims to improve the accuracy and increase the granularity of weather data used in power grid planning, in order to anticipate future energy variations and ensure grid reliability.
Sunaiario cooperated Constellation, a Maryland energy companyto help analyze its growing portfolio of off-site renewables, and has also completed work with Texas-based Leeward Renewable Energy.
In the meantime, Constallation’s corporate venture arm became an investor in Sunairio’s recent $6.4 million venture capital round. The investors were all US-based, including Buoyant Ventures, Constellation Technology Ventures, MassMutual Ventures’ Climate Tech Fund and Rosecliff Ventures.
The investment brought the total raised by Sunairio since its founding in 2020 to $8.8 million. The new capital will be used to expand U.S. market coverage in select energy market regions and build the team.
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