geostellar platform guide and documentation v2.0 030811

8/7/2019 Geostellar Platform Guide and Documentation v2.0 030811

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Util i ty-scale Development

PLATFORM GUIDEUtility Scale and Behind the Meter

RELEASE VERSION 2.0

DOCUMENTATION VERSION 2.0

March 5, 2011

Commercial and Residential-Scale Development

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PLATFORM OVERVIEW

Geostellars solar power geomatics platform (Geostellar) supports the processes of developing and operating

ground and roof mounted photovoltaic (PV) production facilities that are grid-tied or behind-the-meter. Geostellar

provides its subscribers with the following three primary elements:

1. Google Earth-based site searching, browsing and visualization

2. Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based mapping and site analysis

3. Web-based information sharing and collaboration.

This platform guide is intended to walk the project developer through the application of Geostellar in supporting the

establishment of solar power generation facilities at utility, commercial and residential scales.

Applications

The application of Geostellar will vary according to the processes, practices and objectives of the adopting organiza-tion. If applied appropriately, Geostellar can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire project develop-

ment and operations continuum.

With our new 2.0 release, Geostellar directly supports utility-, commercial- and residential-scale solar power project

development. In this release, every user has the opportunity to engage in both utility-scale and behind-the-meter

development activities.

The following list represents a standard set of activities that result in the profitable production of utility-scale solar

power:

Power Market Assessment

Lead Generation and Marketing

Project Economic Modeling and Power Pricing

Site Identification and Acquisition

Technology Selection

Preliminary Project Design

Securing Transmission Rights

Proposals to Power Customers

Negotiating Power Purchase Agreements

Securing Environmental Permits

Negotiating EPC Contracts

Procuring Major Equipment

C o p y r i g h t G e o s t e l l a r 2 0 1 1 , a l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .! C o n f i d e n t i a l P l a t f o r m G u i d e .

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Advanced Project Design

Securing Loan Guarantees and Other Incentives

Securing Project Financing

Modeling, Monitoring and Forecasting Ongoing Production, Price and Market

Like all major Internet-based services platforms, the design and development of Geostellar is highly iterative and

requires the engagement of solar project developers to continue to evolve. Supporting the subscriber-facing systems

described in this document are subsystems that process spatial and tabular data sources to generate the information

accessed by the subscriber. An understanding of the big-data geomatic processes that are described in the technical

notes will help you report issues and request new features. In many cases, new algorithms, models and simulations

can be applied tothe Geostellar data store to address specific needs of subscribers in advance of their integration with

the member-facing systems.

Support

Geostellar provides support beyond our big-data geomatics platform. We are committed to the success of the project

developers who select Geostellar as their modeling, analysis, search and collaboration platform. Our analysts and

engineers are available to support any aspects of project development that might or might not directly apply to our

current platform release. By supporting project development, we can continue to improve the capabilities of the plat-

form, automate more project functions and processes and hone our algorithms against more real-world, operational

data.

The best method of contacting subscriber support is through an email that describes the activities you attempted on

Geostellar, the results and the issues. Please be as specific as possible. We will typically respond to emails within a

few hours at any time, day or night. You can also call our office during normal East Coast business hours.

Geostellar Subscriber Support email: [email protected]

Geostellar main office phone number: 304-260-8585

Getting Started

This guide will walk you through the application of Geostellar in selecting, evaluating, securing and developing sites.

The guide is structured in a way that introduces the subscriber to the major elements of Geostellar in the context of

performing specific tasks. Please work your way through the entire guide in this order to familiarize yourself with

the operation of the platform.

Solar power development is a team sport. While you may wish to assign specific functions and tasks to different in-

dividuals within a team, it is important that each team member understands the capabilities of the complete plat-

form.

In this guide, the subscriber will become adept at applying Geostellar to effectively and efficiently develop a utility-

scale and a behind-the-meter solar facility. There are three primary approaches to the system. Each of these ap-

proaches will be useful at various times in the development process.

1. Identify a potential site that meets certain development criteria using search filters


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2. Browse through regions and areas of interest to characterize the resources and infrastructure

3. Evaluate a specific site at a given location

This subscribers guide will describe the process of accomplishing these tasks as an integrated development team

using the Google Earth, Web and GIS systems, and supported by the professionals at Geostellar.

Technology

At the heart of the platform is a big-data geomatics engine that produces the most accurate, high-resolution solar

production models by simulating the interplay of meteorology, landscape, infrastructure, policy and economics.

Geostellars core insolation models uniquely account for factors such as shadows from natural and man-made ob-

structions, favorable and unfavorable slope, ground-cover ratios, cloud-cover, haze, reflectivity and host of other fac-

tors. Production models account for local temperatures as well as insolation for a wide variety of production tech-

nologies. Infrastructure, property ownership and economic models consider the transmission capacity, assessed val-

ues, rates and incentives for solar power production for each site.


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System Requirements

Subscribers must have these minimum systems in place when interacting with Geostellar. Other operating systems,

browsers, applications and networks may function with the service, but are not currently supported directly by

Geostellar. It is assumed that the subscriber is connected to a broadband Internet connection at all times while access-

ing Geostellar.

Web Browser and Google Earth Interface

Supported Operating Systems and Browsers

Microsoft Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7)

Firefox 3.0+

Apple Mac OS X 10.5.0 and higher (Intel only)

Safari 3.1+

Firefox 3.0+

Google Earth Plug-In

A Google Earth Plug-In is required to run the Web application. Please download from this link:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/earth/download/ge/agree.html

For Google Earth Plug-In system requirements, please visit this link:

http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer= 166096

GIS Interface

Geostellar also provides spatial data sets related to specific sites of interest. These layers that can be combined with

GIS information owned by the subscriber for advanced, detailed mapping and facility design. The GIS layers pro-

vided by Geostellar will typically be raster images and shapefiles that describe the following:

insolation

elevations

surface

parcel boundaries

transmission

exclusions

PV placement

These layers will be in industry standard GIS formats, and may be accessed and processed in various GIS programs.

Geostellar directly supports the open source, freely-available Quantum GIS, which can be downloaded from

http://www.qgis.org/.


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Supported GIS System

Microsoft Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7)

Quantum GIS version 1.6.0 Copiapo

Apple Mac OS X 10.5.0 and higher (Intel only)

Quantum GIS version 1.5.0 Tethys


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Login

To access Geostellar, set your browser to http://prod.geostellar.com/ .

Enter the username and password provided by Geostellar.

Then click the "Log on" button.

If you are accessing Geostellar from a computer you frequently use, select the Remember me on this computer. You

will not be prompted to login again, unless you logout from the application.

Display Panel

Presenting information in a Map and Dashboard

Geostellars primary display panel can present information spatially or in a dashboard. The display can be toggledbetween the Map View (spatial) and Report View dashboard (report) by selecting the labeled tabs above the primary

display.

Map View

The Map View is presented in a Google Earth plug-in (see System Requirements above for downloading instruc-

tions), which can be controlled by keyboard and mouse when the subscriber has clicked inside the globe area. When

the Map View is selected and the globe activated, the subscriber can navigate using the commands described in the

Google Earth user guide at the following location: http://earth.google.com/userguide/v5/ug_keyboard.html.

A few of the most important functions to become familiar with are the following:

1. Zoom in (using the scroll wheel on the mouse, key combo or heads-up display. Or click on the + or buttons on

the primary Google Earth control located to the right of the Map View screen to zoom in or out.)

2. Move the camera to the right (In Map View interface use right arrow key on standard keyboard)

3. Move the camera to the left (In Map View interface use left arrow key on standard keyboard)

4. Tilt-pan helicopter style (shift, left mouse-click and move mouse)


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The initial Map View will center the camera on the United States, which is the only area of interest (AOI) supported

in this release.

Report View

The Report View corresponds to the region or site being examined in the Map View. A dashboard is presented with

summary data for a whole country, state, county or for a specific site. The Report View provides a dashboard of the

basic information for the area of interest.

The initial dashboard for the entire United States:

Along the right column of the Report View, the states are listed. To view a state dashboard, simply click on the hyper-

link. For example, here is a report view for the state of Arizona.


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Scroll down using the scroll bar on the right to view the full dashboard.

Progressing further, the counties are listed to the right of each states report. Here is the report view for Apache

County, Arizona.

Country, state and county reports are generated from database of sites, infrastructure and exclusions to provide high-

level dashboard of regional information. This can help to facilitate the comparison of diverse areas of interest.


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Search Panel

Select a Scale

Identifying and characterizing sites for grid-tied facilities and behind-the-meter power generation systems are very

different operations. Select Utility Scale for grid-tied projects or Behind the Meter for residential- andcommercial-scale development.

Our first set of examples will be for utility-scale development.

Select an Area of Interest

Subscribers can identify suitable sites for development through the application of search filters. To begin, the sub-

scriber must limit the area of interest to a state or a county. To focus the area of interest, pull down the state menu

item to the state you wish to search. The availability of areas on the region pull-down menu is indicated through the

following iconography:

Areas that are published and available through your subscription are indicated with a green checkbox icon

Areas that are published but not available because of subscription limitations are indicated with a yellow padlock

icon

Areas that are not yet published to Geostellar are indicated with a red interdiction icon

In the screen capture, the states represented with yellow locks are not available to this subscriber.


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To identify sites in California, select the state from the State pull down menu in region box as follows:

When California is selected, the Map View will zoom to the area of interest.

A search can be conducted that covers the entire state of California, or the area of interest can be further limited to a

particular county. In this case, lets further refine the search to Madera County by pulling down the county menu.


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Filter sites by Power Production

The simplest way to identify possible sites in the county is to filter by power production. To accomplish this, enter

the minimum and maximum megawatts (MW) to be produced by the facility in the Power Generation box.

To generate a list of sites in the Madera County, CA that will support facilities producing between 5 and 20 MW of

peak power output, populate the required fields and press the Search button.


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In the default case the list of sites generated by the search are ranked and listed by peak production potential in MW.

The top ten sites are listed in the Search Results pane, which replaced the Search Filter pane to the left of the browser

when the Search button was clicked. The same sites that are listed in the Search Results pane are also displayed on in

the Map View. When the get more results link at the bottom of the list is selected, an additional 10 sites are dis-

played in the list and on the map.

Sorting the Search Results

The search results are initially sorted and listed according to how much power can be produced on the site (Peak

MW). The same search results can be resorted according to the following site attributes:

insolation (Avg. kW/m2)

the number of parcels on the site (SiteParcel Count)

size of the site (Area)

The result set can be resorted by clicking on the dropdown menue next to the Sort by: field as shown above, and

then selecting a new attribute.


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Expanding the Site Summaries

High-level summary information on each site can be viewed if the green arrows are clicked. When selected, the green

arrows point downward to display the size, slope and number of parcels in the site. Several sites can be expanded at

once. In this case, sites 1 and 3 are expanded.

Explore a SiteTo explore a particular site on the map, click on the hyperlinks in the Search Results pane. To view Site #1, click on

the hyperlink labeled 18.83 MW near Le Grand, CA. The camera on the Map View will zoom down directly above

the site.


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This can also be accomplished by double-clicking on a red pin on the Map View.

To explore the site visually within the Map View, simultaneously press the shift key, click on the map with the left

mouse key and move the mouse around on the mouse pad. In this example, the area is clearly rural and agricultural.

Mountains are visible in the distance in all directions, with very little commercial or residential development. Trans-

mission lines are shown in black (if the Utilities box is checked).


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Displaying and Hiding Layers in the Map View

Above the Map View are labeled check boxes that control the display of the following information layers on top of

the Google Earth imagery:

Search Results

Saved Sites

Roads

Political Boundaries

Utilities

Deselecting the Sites check box removes the polygon that delineates the site. The green transparent polygon disap-

pears, revealing the imagery beneath.


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Select the Utility check box to view or hide transmission lines. In this view, black transmission lines are visible in the

distance.


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Clicking on the transmission line will display the line voltage and owner in a pop-up bubble. If there are multiple

transmission lines in a conduit, the maximum transmission value is displayed. In this case, the line selected carries up

to 138 kilovolts (kV) and is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric.

The roads and political boundaries can also be hidden by deselecting the appropriately labeled checkbox.

Saving a Site

When an interesting site has been identified, it can be saved for future reference by clicking on the Save Site link in

the Map View or in the expanded site summary under the Search Results.

To display the Save Site link in the map view, click on the pin located at the center of the site you wish to save.

The Save Site link is presented next to a star icon in the balloon. The Save Site link is in also available in the expanded

summary of the Search Results.

When the Save Site link is clicked, the site listing appears in the Saved column of the left pane. To revisit the site, se-

lect the Saved tab at any time, and click the site link.


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Note the string of numbers and letters on the second row of the balloon in the above screen. This is a unique identi-

fier for the site (Site ID). Every site in Geostellar has a unique Site ID that is formed from the latitude and longitude

(Lat-Long) coordinates of the northwest-most point of the site. In this case, the Lat-Long for the northwest corner of

the site is 36.982,-120.287, while the Site ID is 120.287075W-36.982090N, which is the reverse of the Lat-Long. You will

need the Site ID if you wish to share the site with a colleague or request additional detailed information or higher-resolution site modeling from Geostellar.

To remove a site from the Saved Sites tab simply expand the site listing by clicking on the green arrow click Remove

next to the trash bin icon.

Saved sites are associated with a particular subscribers account. You can retrieve and revisit saved sites any time you

log into Geostellar from any computer.


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Site Dashboard

Details of sites are available in the Report View tab after the Site Details link in the site pop-up balloon has been

clicked. The Site Details link is visible to the left of the Save Site link in the Map View screens above. Dashboards can

also be browsed by selecting the Report View tab forward and clicking on the site links in the Search Results tab orthe Saved tab.

At the top of the dashboard are graphics that characterize the site in the context of the county. The charts represent

power production potential, insolation, slope and size.

In this case, the site has significant production potential, with average insolation for the county. The site is fairly flat,

with a maximum slope of 1 degree. The size is relatively small for the county.

Scrolling down the Report View reveals information on land ownership parcels. A table shows the Parcel ID, the ap-

praised value of the parcel, the size of the parcel and the owner.

In this case, all of the parcels are owned by the same firm, LSF Madera LLC. In some cases, the parcels will be owned

by individuals, such as the ones below owned by Donald and Gerald E Bernard in Clinton County, Ohio.


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To get the details of the individual parcel, click on the icon to the left of the parcel row in the table.

This 121.26 acre parcel on Antioch Road, owned by Donald Bernard, shows the total assessed value, the value of the

land and the assessed value of the structures, the zoning and the mailing address of the property owner in Wilming-

ton, OH.

Beneath the parcel table are details of the transmission lines near the site. A transmission table displays giving infor-

mation on the utility type, ownership, capacity, distance and bearing from the selected site.


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In this case, there are five 69kV transmission lines all running along the same path within one kilometer of the site,

and another 69kV line two and a half kilometers from the site. To view details of a particular transmission line or sub-

station presented in a lightbox, click to the left of the relevant row.

A table of other infrastructure elements, such as roads, railroads and bridges, is beneath the transmission table. Scroll

down the page to view the infrastructure table.


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Details on these infrastructure elements can also be retrieved by clicking to the left of the row.


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Search Filters

In order to find sites that most closely match your development strategy, a filter can be applied to remove sites from

the search result based on a number of criteria in any combination. To set a basic filter, click on the Search Filter hy-

perlink below the Power Generation box.

A lightbox will appear in front of the display that provides options for limiting the result set by the following criteria:

1. Solar Potential (insolation in kW/m2/day)

2. Area (size of the site in acres)

3. Parcels (number of tax parcels that comprise the site)

4. Transmission

a. distance of the site from transmission lines in kilometers

b. minimum rating of the transmission line in kilovolts

c. maximum rating of the transmission line in kilovolts


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If the basic filter provides enough criteria to adequately limit the search, enter the appropriate values in the fields

then click Save to store the filter. If you wish to limit the search by more granular combinations of attributes, build a

custom filter. The custom filter link is located on the top right of the lightbox.

The custom filter provides a drop down list of attributes and operators that can be used to construct complex queries.


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When the Select Attribute menu is clicked, the following list of attributes is available:


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Fore each attribute, the following operators are available:

If you only want sites with an average slope less than or equal to 5 degrees, you can add this criteria to a search:


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Additional criteria can be added to further limit the search. In this case, sites will only be displayed that are flatter

than 5 degrees on average, are within 1 kilometer of a transmission line rated to carry 69 kilovolts or less and with an

average insolation of at least 3.85 kilowatts per meter squared.

You can remove a single search criterion by clicking on the red circle with a white X to the right of the statement.

Once the filter is saved, you can apply it to a search by checking the the Apply Search Filter box in the search panel.

The latest filter created will be saved so that you can apply or remove the filter for specific searches. When the Apply

Search Filter box is checked, the searches will eliminate the results that do not meet the filter criteria, and when the

box is unchecked, the filter will be disregarded by the search function.


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Browse Sites

While the search engine described above identifies and displays the sites that meet a particular set of criteria over a

county or state, the Show Sites button reveals the 25 sites closest to the point on the landscape directly below the

viewer on the map. One use of this capability is to fill in adjacent sites after results have been retrieved in a search,such as in the example below.

The Show Sites button is located in the upper right corner of the map, and will appear after clicking the Set Filter

hyperlink.

A light box will appear after clicking Set Filter that gives the option to show sites by Utility or Rooftop scale. Choose

Utility Scale. Rooftop scale is described in the behind-the-meter section of this documentation, below.


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Input the constraints that will filter the sites displayed and click Save. The light box will disappear, and the Show

Utility Sites hyperlink will be available in the All Sites box. Please note: if there are any red fields or icons,

When the Show Utility Utility sites link is clicked, the 25 sites that closest to the center of the camera are revealed.

These are sites that might not have met the initial search criteria, because the sites were too small, the slopes too high,

they were too far from transmission or any other reason. Yet the developer might wish to gain instelligence into the

land ownership, assessed values, insolation, topography or other factors that will help to characterize the area of in-

terest. After clicking Show Utility Sites, please be patient, as this operation can take up to a couple of minutes to com-

plete.

In the example shown, the 1.71 MW site near Le Grand, CA that appeared in the list of 25 sites closest to the point on

the map below the viewer, had been excluded from the search because it was below the 5 MW minimum search

threshold. To bring forward the dashboard for the site discovered with the Show Sites key, click on the Site Details

link.

The Show Sites button can also be used to characterize sites at a known location as described in the next section.


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Behind the Meter

With the Geostellar 2.0 release, Geostellar has added dedicated functions for marketing and developing residential-

and commercial-scale solar power projects. These functions are organized as a behind-the-meter subsystem.

To change which scale you desire to search simply select "Behind the Meter" from the drop-down menu.

Then select the area of interest for a search. In Behind the Meter, a specific county or district must be selected. In this

case, well explore Washington, DC.

The map view will zoom to the selected region. By default, all Behind the Meter searches for an area will consider

both rooftop and ground-based sites. To search only rooftop sites, click the "Basic Search" filter and check the "Roof-

top" check box. At this point basic filter criteria can also be established, such as the size of the site and the solar poten-

tial.


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Click "Save." Then click "Search" on main map view page. For rooftop Behind the Meter searches, you will want to set

the Power Generation scale substantially lower than you would with Utility Scale. In this case, well leave the Power

Generation filter to search for rooftop sites over 1 MW and see what we get.

In this case, there are only 6 rooftop sites capable of producing over 1MW of power within Washington, DC. As in the

Utility Scale search, Geostellar will zoom to area of interest and search results will display. The resulting sites will

appear as text in the "Search Results" panel listed on the left of the Map View screen as well as in numbered markers

on the Google Earth screen.

Clicking on either the hyperlinked site in the search results panel or the red pop-up marker in the Map View screen

will select the site of interest.


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In this case, the top site is a roof with 1.87 MW of solar power production potential at 700 T. Street in Washington,

DC. Click on the marker or the arrowed dropdown in the Search Results panel and select "Site Details" to view the

site dashboard.

Rooftops typically have multiple areas of power production separated by obstructions. Geostellar aggregates these

into a composite production potential for the structure, and also lists each individual section of the roof separately as

sub sites.


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To access sub-site specific information, select the hyperlinked gray box located next to east Site ID on the far left of

the Sub Sites detail box. A screen showing sub-site specific information will appear.

The same process is used to access property ownership details on the tax parcel for the selected site of interest.

Go To a SiteIn some cases, you will want to fly directly to a location and reveal the solar productivity, ownership and infrastruc-

ture characteristics of the site. To go to a site, simply enter a street address or geographic coordinates in lattitude/

longitude decimal degree format in the Go To: box.

In this case, the Go to: address is 1545 New York Avenue, Washington, DC. You can also go to an address by moving

the map. When the map is centered on the building of interest, select the All Sites: Set Filter, and then click the Show

BTM sites hyperlink. The sites directly under the viewer will be displayed.

geostellar platform guide and documentation v2.0 030811

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