Global independent assurance and risk management provider DNV of Norway has acquired solar irradiance data and forecasting technology company Solcast from Australia to expand its solar forecasting expertise, the company has announced.
Solcast provides data and tools necessary for solar forecasting data incorporating global weather satellite imagery, machine learning, computer vision, and the like, to solar power producers.
The Australian company claims its technology to accurately produce more than 600 million new forecasts every hour in a cloud-based environment. Using an application programming interface (API), it also offers real-time access to forecast data with a 5-minute to 15-minute resolution by tracking cloud movements precisely every single minute between satellite scans.
"We are excited to combine Solcast's forecast, real-time, and historical data and expertise with DNV's analytics, advisory, monitoring, asset management, and domain knowledge," said CEO of Energy Systems at DNV, Ditlev Engel. "By joining forces, we take an important step toward even more digital services and data delivery to enable customers to efficiently develop and operate their rapidly growing portfolios in all parts of their solar plants life cycle."
For Solcast, the association with DNV will expand its reach to more energy developers and operators. Solcast Founder and CEO James Luffman stated, "This partnership will bring the world's leading solar irradiance and forecasting API to an even larger global audience, whilst maintaining the same level of service that our customers expect."
Calling itself a team of solar radiation data experts, Solcast will continue to operate under the existing management, staff and will also retain its brand name. Monetary terms of the deal were not revealed.
DNV's efforts to expand its analytics expertise led to the company's solar monitoring, control and asset management system provider GreenPowerMonitor (GPM) acquiring Austrian PV analytics technology platform PEAK in September 2021 (see PV Analytics Firm Changes Hands).