Is this site dying?

[Alan 6104]

Looking at Maps, report date November 2019 there are
only a handful of sites with data shown. It used to be
fully populated within a few day's of the start of the
month which I found useful for comparing my system's
performance with others nearby. In fact that was the
main reason for submitting readings but now I think I
am wasting my time. A reply from someone at mgdb would
be appreciated.
Al.

[Alan 6104]

Something strange going on!
Replies are coming direct to my email and not to the forum.
What is going on?
Al

[paul dobson]

Hi Alan
Can’t answer your question really, but I have had the same thing recently too.
I liked the comparison elements even to look at other areas of the country to see what sort of performance levels they were achieving. However I can only seem to be able to compare 3 neighbors and that’s it, so agree it’s not as good. I also had a period earlier this year where for 3 months or so I couldn’t log in at all despite changing log in details. Although that is good now It is not the same which is disappointing.
Paul

[Andy Fletcher]

Messages on this list have the "From:" set to the original person and
have the "Mailing-list:" header. "Reply-To:" is not set.

This means that a simple reply will send mail to the originator. "Reply
list" if your mail programme supports it will send the message to the
list as I'm doing now.

This is all correct and how a mailing list should be setup.

Was up at my place in Shropshire over the Christmas break, weather was
much better than last year and I didn't need to pull out the generator.
I even got 8.5KWh on the glorious Christmas Day without a cloud in the sky.

Andy

--
Kids not coal
- what CO2 legacy are you going to leave? Use renewables.

Andy Fletcher
Email:an...@x31.com
PGP/GPG:0x7767E3C6
Skype:andy.fletcher
Freenode:andyfletcher

[John Rush]

All,

I've just done a bit of checking. Most of the staff shown on the Microgen web site and most of the post graduate staff have moved onto new roles or completed courses based on the dates on the profiles and also the fact they don't seem to appear on staff lists.

I am hopeful that the site does continue as it provides a useful modelling tool. Given that https://terc.ac.uk/history/ is being put together now I can believe the site has some importance.

I did bump into one of the staff on a train during and he was not encouraging about the future of the resource.

It would be good to hear from the staff at Sheffield Solar.

John.

Email...@x31.com

[Kevin Morrison]

I'm not sure the system is working properly either, I've been very disappointed in the last few years that they have been taking our data, using it and not giving much back to us either.  I've been uploading data but its not auto processing which is probably what the main issue is.

Also they seem to be focusing on PV Live (https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/), which is an interesting concept but not sure if its the same core database as ours or something different.  I know they experimented with getting live data into the system some years ago but I don't think it went far.

Also, I assume you all use PVOutput to load data into, that also give you some details of neighbors data.  You can manually upload or auto upload depending on your setup.

Happy new year all,

Kevin

[John Rush]

I would have to agree. I wonder if the administrators would allow some other to run the site ?

Happy to help

John

[Aldous]

Happy New Year to you all!

I'd like to reassure you that we are still maintaining the site and very much value the data and contributions that you make.

It is true that our focus has moved towards PV_Live for the past few years as this is where virtually all of our funding has come from. For PV_Live we do use a different dataset from the Microgen Database (MgDB). The MgDB dataset is not suitable for that project as we need more frequent data with guarantees over its reliability.

We are currently evaluating our activities and priorities, including around the MgDB so this thread is quite timely. I will take your comments to the team along with any more that you would like to add to the discussion.  The Sheffield Solar website may give the impression that many of the core members have left but that includes a broader group of researchers. In fact our group leader and most of us who have worked on the MgDB project are still here.

Thanks to this thread we have also noticed that a manual script that we run to bring in data from some systems that come from a commercial provider has not been run for a while. This was overlooked when we had a change in staff, so we've set it running now. We employ a student, part time, for the day to day running and maintenance of the site. This provides valuable experience for the students and, as you can probably imagine, there is a reasonably quick turnover of that staff. While this has some disadvantages such as continuity, it also means that we get fresh ideas and skills with each new student.

John, thanks for your offer to help with the site running. I will take that comment to the rest of the team but I think it would be too costly, administratively, to do this at present. Having said that if anyone has skills and time they think they could offer let me know and I'll pass it on to the team.

I will shortly provide an update post to this forum to give members more information on what's going on with the Microgen Database more generally.

I hope this answers some of your questions and reassures you that we are still here, value this resource and wish to continue to provide a good service to you into the future. We have a greater resource of ideas than time!

Best wishes

Aldous

Sheffield Solar's business development manager

[Alan 6104]

Aldous, March data still not showing. Is the mgdb site dying of covid 19?

[microgen-database]

Hi Alan,

We only recently run the analysis so it should be showing up now

Let me know if something is still not working on your side and we can investigate the issue

Kind regards

Vlad