2023-03-17 Bug fixed for day-shift issues in TMY on PVGIS 5.2
We discovered an error that was causing a day shift in different directions for the TMY data due to the presence of leap years. This error affects also PVGIS 5.1, but it has only been corrected in PVGIS 5.2.
2023-03-15 PVGIS 5.2 database update and bug fixes
The PVGIS database will be updated on the morning of 15 March 2023. This concerns:
- Repair of a small number of pixels that were missing between [-0.0175, -0.0075] degrees of longitude (see previous message of 2023-02-15)
- Regeneration of the PVGIS ERA5-Land time series for temperature, wind speed and direction and relative humidity to correct some anomalies that occurred in the previous production.
We note a remaining anomaly in some relative humidity values for May 2006. We are investigating and hope to fix as soon as possible. This has no impact on PV performance estimates, but in some cases could influence the TMY output. Use of PVGIS5.1 for TMY remains our recommended option.
Finally, we are also making two bug fixes: a) to allow user selection of the solar radiation database for TMY and b) to correct a 24 hour (one day) time shift in TMY data, when the selected year for a given month is a leap year, or the year after a leap year..
2023-02-15 PVGIS 5.2. (Nearly) Fixed missing data for climatic variables in the coastlines
There was missing data for several climatic variables near the coastlines, namely temperature, wind speed, wind direction, Surface infrared (thermal) irradiance and relative humidity have been fixed by interpolating the gaps with data extracted from ERA5 instead of ERA5-Land.
Still, a few pixels are missing between [-0.0175, -0.0075] degrees of longitude. In ERA5-Land, these pixels are not considered to be land, thus not present in first place. Examples of affected locations are near Brighton (UK), near Benidorm (ES) and near Accra (Ghana).
2022-09-25 PVGIS 5.2. Hour shift in PVGIS-ERA5 fixed
There was an hour shift on the irradiation values coming from PVGIS-ERA5. This was also causing abnormal spikes towards the end of the day for tracking-mounting systems and inclined planes in general. We stress this was not an issue for the main PVGIS-SARAH2 database.
2022-09-25 PVGIS tools. Search location by address problem solved
The problem in PVGIS tools when searching for a location by its address has been solved. So, in addition to defining a location by its coordinates or directly selecting its position on the map, it is again possible to define a location by its address.
2022-05-29 PVGIS tools. Search location by address
The option to search for a location by defining its address in PVGIS tools is temporarily not working properly. However, it is still possible to define the location by its latitude and longitude coordinates. We are working to fix problem.
In the meantime, you could use https://www.openstreetmap.org to search for a location by its address. The map will then be centred at the said location and the url in the address bar of the web browser will be updated accordingly with the coordinates of the defined address (eg. https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=ispra#map=14/45.8113/8.6116). You can then use these coordinates in PVGIS.
2022-03-01 PVGIS 5.2
- See the release note, which includes the list of fixed bugs.
2020-05-07 Updated maps in the user interface
The source of the Open Streeet Map and label layers in the user interface is changed to the OSM data managed by the European Commission's GISCO service and accessible from the Webtools site. The previous layers contained some inconsistencies regarding place names and disputed areas.
2019-12-17 Hotfix
Off-grid PV systems:
- The default hourly consumption profile is defined for UTC time, which for UTC 0 time zone location corresponds to local time, but this was not correctly translated to the user's selected longitude. The calculations in PVGIS are internally made in UTC, so the above error resulted in an under estimation of both battery and module requirements. This deviation was greater the further the location was from the zero meridian.
- The calculations with user-defined hourly consumption profiles were only correct if the time format supplied was UTC, but this was not specified in the documentation. This has been changed. All user-defined consumption profiles must be given in standard local time, without applying daylight saving offsets.
2019-12-03 PVGIS 5.1
- See the release note, which includes the list of fixed bugs.
2017-09-01 PVGIS 5
- See the release note.