Global economic trends suggest that there is a need to generate sustainable renewable energy to meet growing global energy demands. Solar energy harnessed by concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) systems has a potential for strong contributions to future energy supplies. However, as a relatively new technology, there is still a need for considerable research into the relationship between the technology and the solar resource. Research into CPV systems was carried out at the University of Ottawa’s Solar Cells and Nanostructured Device Laboratory (SUNLAB), focusing on the acquisition and assessment of meteorological and local solar resource datasets as inputs to more complex system (cell) models for energy yield assessment. An algorithm aimed at estimating the spectral profile of direct normal irradiance (DNI) was created. The algorithm was designed to use easily sourced low resolution meteorological datasets, temporal band pass filter measurement and an atmospheric radiative transfer model to determine a location specific solar spectrum. Its core design involved the use of an optical depth parameterization algorithm based on a published objective regression algorithm. Initial results showed a spectral agreement that corresponds to 0.56% photo-current difference in a modeled CPV cell when compared to measured spectrum. The common procedures and datasets used for long term CPV energy yield assessment was investigated. The aim was to quantitatively de-convolute various factors, especially meteorological factors responsible for error bias in CPV energy yield evaluation. Over the time period from June 2011 to August 2012, the analysis found that neglecting spectral variations resulted in a ~2% overestimation of energy yields. It was shown that clouds have the dominant impact on CPV energy yields, at the 60% level.

Global economic trends suggest that there is a need to generate sustainable renewable energy to meet growing global energy demands. Solar energy harnessed by concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) systems has a potential for strong contributions to future energy supplies. However, as a relatively new technology, there is still a need for considerable research into the relationship between the technology and the solar resource. Research into CPV systems was carried out at the University of Ottawa’s Solar Cells and Nanostructured Device Laboratory (SUNLAB), focusing on the acquisition and assessment of meteorological and local solar resource datasets as inputs to more complex system (cell) models for energy yield assessment. An algorithm aimed at estimating the spectral profile of direct normal irradiance (DNI) was created. The algorithm was designed to use easily sourced low resolution meteorological datasets, temporal band pass filter measurement and an atmospheric radiative transfer model to determine a location specific solar spectrum. Its core design involved the use of an optical depth parameterization algorithm based on a published objective regression algorithm. Initial results showed a spectral agreement that corresponds to 0.56% photo-current difference in a modeled CPV cell when compared to measured spectrum. The common procedures and datasets used for long term CPV energy yield assessment was investigated. The aim was to quantitatively de-convolute various factors, especially meteorological factors responsible for error bias in CPV energy yield evaluation. Over the time period from June 2011 to August 2012, the analysis found that neglecting spectral variations resulted in a ~2% overestimation of energy yields. It was shown that clouds have the dominant impact on CPV energy yields, at the 60% level.

This thesis aimed to assess a given Data Warehouse against a well-suited Data Lakehouse in terms of read performance and scalability. Using the TPC-DS benchmark, these systems were tested with synthetic datasets reflecting the specific needs of a Decision Support (DSS) system. Moreover, this research aimed to determine whether certain categories of queries resulted in notably large discrepancies between the systems. This might help pinpoint the architectural differences that cause these discrepancies. Initial research identified BigQuery and Delta Lake as top candidates due to their exceptional read performance and scalability, prompting further investigation into both. The most significant latency difference was noted in the initial benchmark using a dataset scale of 2 GB, with BigQuery outperforming Delta Lake. As the dataset size grew, BigQuery’s latency increased by 336%, while Delta Lake’s went up by just 40%. However, BigQuery still maintained a significant overall lower latency across all scales. Detailed query analysis showed BigQuery excelling especially with complex queries, those involving extensive aggregation and multiple join operations, which have a high potential for generating large intermediate data during the shuffle stage. It was hypothesized that some of the read performance discrepancies could be attributed to BigQuery’s in-memory shuffling capability, whereas Delta Lake might spill intermediate data to the disk. Delta Lake’s hardware utilization metrics further supported this theory, displaying a trend where peaks in memory usage and disk write rate coincided with queries showing high discrepancies. Meanwhile, CPU utilization remained low. This pattern suggests an I/O-bound system rather than a CPU-bound one, possibly explaining the observed performance differences. Future studies are encouraged to explicitly monitor shuffle operations, aiming for a more rigorous correlation between high-discrepancy queries and data spillage during the shuffle phase. Further research should also include larger dataset sizes; this thesis was constrained to a maximum dataset size of 64 GB due to limited resources. / Denna uppsats undersökte ett givet Data Warehouse i jämförelse med ett lämpligt Data Lakehouse med fokus på läsprestanda och skalbarhet. Med hjälp av TPC-DS benchmark testades dessa system med syntetiska dataset som speglade kundens specifika behov. Vidare syftade forskningen till att avgöra om vissa kategorier av queries resulterade i märkbart stora skillnader mellan systemen. Detta för att identifiera de teknologiska aspekter hos systemen som orsakar dessa skillnader. Den inledande litteraturstudien identifierade BigQuery och Delta Lake som toppkandidater på grund av deras läsprestanda och skalbarhet, vilket ledde till ytterligare undersökning av båda. Den mest påtagliga skillnaden i latens noterades i den initiala jämförelsen med ett dataset av storleken 2 GB, där BigQuery presterade bättre än Delta Lake. När datamängden skalades upp, ökade BigQuery’s latens med 336%, medan Delta Lakes ökade med endast 40%. Dock bibehöll BigQuery en avsevärt lägre total latens för samtliga datamängder. Detaljerad analys visade att BigQuery presterade särskilt bra under komplexa queries som involverade omfattande aggregering och flera join-operationer, vilka har en hög potential för att generera stora datamängder under shuffle-fasen. Det antogs att skillnaderna i latens delvis kunde tillskrivas BigQuery’s in-memory shuffle-kapacitet, medan Delta Lake riskerade att spilla data till disk. Delta Lakes hårdvaruanvändning stödde denna teori ytterligare, där toppar i minnesanvändning och skrivhastighet till disk sammanföll med queries som visade höga skillnader, samtidigt som CPU-användningen förblev låg. Detta mönster tyder på ett I/O-bundet system snarare än ett CPU-bundet, vilket möjligen förklarar de observerade prestandaskillnaderna. Framtida studier uppmuntras att explicit övervaka shuffle-operationer, med målet att mer noggrant koppla queries som uppvisar stora skillnader med dataspill under shuffle-fasen. Ytterligare forskning bör också inkludera större datamängdstorlekar; denna avhandling var begränsad till en maximal datamängdstorlek på 64 GB på grund av begränsade resurser.