RaZON+ Fully Tested and Ready To Go
Published: Tuesday, June 6, 2017
The first RaZON+ systems have left the factory in Delft, the Netherlands, to provide irradiance measurements to customers in the meteorology, solar energy and industrial markets. An important part of the development traject to get the RaZON+ ready for customers was testing. It started with the first prototypes and the separate components, followed by continuous outdoor testing of the full system on our own roof top and, at a later stage, the important CE tests to get it ready to market.
Comparison of the RaZON+ performance
Alongside the outdoor tests at our own facility we had several other locations for testing. We can’t disclose all of them but we did cover a wide reach over the globe. One site is also in the Netherlands, but at an independent location, where R&D have tested the RaZON+ for over 9 months comparing it to a ‘BSRN-type’ station, built up from a 2AP sun tracker and a CHP1 pyrheliometer and a CMP21 pyranometer.
This site also provided measurements with competitive instruments and the favourable results were presented at the WMO CIMO-TECO meeting in Madrid as well as the Annual EMS Meeting in Trieste, Italy in September 2016.
Tested during the NPC
Kipp & Zonen always participates in the National Pyrheliometer Comparison (NPC) hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, USA with our reference CHP1 and SHP1 pyrheliometers and PMO6 Absolute Cavity Radiometer. This was the perfect opportunity to do some final tests with the RaZON+ and compare it to other absolute cavities (the world standard for direct solar irradiance measurements). Some practical setup inconveniences were found and corrected.
Perfect solution for solar prospecting
Another important test location is in Yanchi, in the Ningxia province of China. A prototype has been thoroughly tested by a one of the 5 largest electricity companies of the country. They find in RaZON+ the perfect solution for prospecting for new solar energy sites.
