Get wise to the weather: Popular Power’s climate-enhanced features and how to use them

Popular Power provides you with site-level climate data so that you know, on a daily basis, what is going on, weather-wise, at your site.

Solar yield depends on many factors, but one of the most important is the climate conditions. Your site planning takes into account what the climate has traditionally done in the area in order to create an accurate estimate of what the site’s production will be (traditionally via a TMY model that provides a P50 or P90). Your site’s production (and therefore performance) day in and day out is impacted by what the climate conditions are onsite.

Climate data ensures you are not flying blind. It’s a critical factor in understanding your site’s production and performance at a point in time or as a trend. You can’t draw conclusions about production and performance trends without knowing what the climate conditions on site were.

It supports portfolio managers and operators in identifying where to prioritize operational actions, but it still requires investigation and follow-up to achieve the expected outcomes.

Think of climate data as a spectrum. You can treat it as a data point or you can treat it as a religion. The decision is up to you and the kind of operator you want to be.

Climate-enhanced features in action

One of the easiest ways to understand how your site is performing is through the Popular Widgets on each site page.

In this example, the site appears to be hitting its production targets — which would normally mean there’s nothing to worry about. But when we layer in climate data, the story changes. The site is leaving kilowatt-hours on the table. For anyone managing a PPA (or a shared-savings model), that means leaving money on the table, too.

The Site Health rating shows that performance dropped by 21% last month, which points to an issue worth investigating. To dig deeper, you can open the site graphs and turn on the Climate Model view.

Here’s what we see between September and October:

At first glance, the site seems to meet its daily targets, and you might assume the low-generation days are weather-related. But when we compare against the Climate Model, a different pattern emerges.

The turquoise bars represent expected generation based on climate conditions — confirming that some “down days” were simply due to poor weather. But the yellow line, which shows actual generation, reveals a steady downward trend that can’t be explained by climate alone.

The most likely cause? Soiling.

Soiling can reduce generation by 5–25% per month for distributed systems, especially in industrial or arid areas like this one.

With the Popular Climate Model, you can spot these trends early, identify potential soiling rates, and take targeted operational action across your portfolio.

How to use it

Popular Power shows you the daily and historical climate data for each of your sites. You can use this to understand whether your system’s production matches what would be expected given the weather conditions (irradiance, temperature, humidity, cloud opacity, rain, among others). For example, a dip in generation might make sense on a day with low irradiance or heavy cloud cover.

The platform displays the “Climate Model” as a variable in the Graphs section for each site and calculates Performance vs. Climate (an example of a climate-enhanced feature) over different time periods in the summaries and site tables.

 Performance vs. Climate = Actual Generation / Climate Model

“Climate Model” simply refers to what the potential generation could be, given the climate conditions on site. 

You can configure your own expected loss factor to reflect real-world conditions such as shading, dust or soiling, temperature losses, inverter efficiency, mismatches, and AC-side losses. The default value is 20%, and it can be easily adjusted from within the platform.

This helps you answer a simple but essential question: Is my system generating at its maximum capacity, given today’s weather?

How it works

At Popular Power, we’ve developed a specialized climate model designed to provide accurate, transparent, and useful information about your system’s solar generation potential.

This model combines satellite-based meteorological data and advanced algorithms with key parameters from your system to estimate how much energy you should be generating under current climate conditions.

The model integrates data such as:

• Geolocation (latitude and longitude)

• Installed capacity

• Generation history

• Performance of similar sites

• Expected design losses

  
  

Climate variables included:

• DNI, DHI, and GHI (irradiance)

• Cloud cover

• Temperature

• Relative humidity

• Precipitation

• Wind speed

  
  

The result is a robust, localized estimate of expected performance.

Pillars of the Climate Model

• Transparent: You know how much you should be generating

• Localized: Climate data at 2–5 km resolution from your site

• Flexible: Adjust losses to match real conditions

• Proven: Based on global methodologies and established data providers

• Efficient: Requires no system drawings or complex engineering

• Always evolving: Soon to include factors such as tilt and orientation

What it’s not

The Climate Model doesn’t measure what your system is doing—it estimates what it should be doing based on weather conditions. It’s not a diagnostic tool for equipment issues or a replacement for on-site data and inspections.

It supports operators in identifying where to prioritize operational actions, but it still requires investigation and follow-up to achieve the expected outcomes.

How to make use of this information

Use The Climate Model to give context to your production data, not to replace it. It helps you answer questions like:

• Is today’s production consistent with the climate conditions?

• Are there patterns or anomalies driven by weather trends?

• When comparing sites or planning new capacity, am I considering climate differences?

  
  

When you interpret your production data through the lens of climate, your analysis becomes clearer, your decisions more grounded, and your operations more effective.

Popular Power offers an intelligence aide to streamline your solar portfolio management. Use tools like the climate-enhanced features and the Site Health Scores to reduce manual workload and quickly identify revenue-generating opportunities across your portfolio. Don’t treat it like just another monitoring platform. Remember: we’re already automating (therefore eliminating) the baseline monitoring work for you, so that your time is freed up to focus on higher-impact activities.

And we’re not stopping there — our next update includes machine learning models that predict optimal cleaning patterns and help operators continue to push O&M efficiency even further.

To learn more about Popular Power’s value for your company, book a time here.