Patent ID: 8682585

Claim:
A computer-implemented system for inferring operational specifications of a photovoltaic power generation system, comprising: a data storage comprising computer-readable data, comprising: historical power production data measured over an earlier time period for and a location of a photovoltaic power generation plant; historical measured irradiance data over the earlier time period; and a plurality of photovoltaic plant configurations that each comprise a power rating and operational features hypothesized for the plant; a computer comprising a processor and memory within which code for execution by the processor is stored, comprising: a simulation module configured to simulate power output production data for each of the photovoltaic plant configurations based on a normalized photovoltaic power generation plant using the historical measured irradiance data for the earlier time period; a system rating module configured to derive a simulated photovoltaic system rating as a function of the historical power production data and the simulated power output production data; a scaling module configured to scale the simulated power output production data by the simulated photovoltaic system rating over each point in the earlier time period; and an inference module configured to infer the plant's configuration from the photovoltaic plant configuration that exhibits a minimal error between the scaled simulated power output production data and the historical power production data.