Kipp & Zonen France and PTS Mesures; a Long History of Cooperation
Published: Tuesday, June 2, 2015
PTS Mesures is specialized in the fields of measurement sensors, system integration, data acquisition and data transmission. In France, the cooperation between Kipp & Zonen and PTS Mesures has been ongoing for more than 15 years, during which PTS has installed and serviced our instruments in various fields, such as; meteorology, industry, defense, agriculture and renewable energy. Since 2009, PTS Mesures has sold a large number of compact weather stations including our pyranometers and mounting accessories.
When we first demonstrated the new CMP10 pyranometer to Mr. Thierry Simon, founder of PTS Mesures, he immediately expressed his appreciation of the quality of the instrument. He considers the fact that the CMP10 combines ISO Secondary Standard performance with minimal maintenance as most impressive.
”We have installed the CMP10 in many PV plants across France“, he says, “in order to quantify the received energy from the sun over the solar panels. This way the performance ratio can be calculated. The CMP10 is also used as a reference to correlate the readings from silicon cells, which are used as irradiance measurement sensors too. The importance of a pyranometer is crucial as the calculated performance ratio can vary depending on the characteristics of the silicon sensors.”
CMP10 pyranometers measuring horizontal and tilted global radiation Most of PTS Mesures customers ask for two CMP10 pyranometers, one horizontal and one tilted at the same angle as the solar panels. Mr. Simon also mentions how robust and practical the Kipp & Zonen mounting accessories are. PTS Mesures uses CMF 1 mounting fixtures and CMB 1 mounting brackets for almost every sensor. PTS Mesures does not only serve solar energy customers but also, for example, research into the efficiency of buildings. Recently they have installed two pairs of CMP 3 pyranometer and CGR 3 pyrgeometer over a rooftop test site separated into two areas. The goal of this project is to monitor the heat exchanges between the roof and the atmosphere for different types of vegetation and mineral roof coverings.
We thank PTS Mesures for their long cooperation with Kipp & Zonen and especially Thierry Simon for sharing his experiences with our instruments. More information can be found at www.pts-mesures.com.