If required the NMS Profile adapter can be configured to create PV profiles based on the time of year and the utilities location. These profiles are used within the NMS power flow analysis to simulate time of day PV output based on varying ranges of cloud cover and help provide more accurate power flow solutions. The power flow analysis holds weather forecast data for customer configured weather zones, this forecast data drives which PV profiles are used for each weather zone. For example if a customer had two weather zones "Coastal" and "Mountain", If it was predicted to be "Sunny" from 9am-1pm then "Cloudy" from 1pm-6pm in the "Coastal" zone the analysis would use the proper output for each hour using snippets from both profiles. For solutions from 9am-1pm the analysis would use the "Sunny" profile then switch to using the "Cloudy" profile for solutions from 1pm-6pm. This same methodology would be applied to the "Mountain" zone power flow solutions using its own unique weather forecast. It is up to the utility to determine the granularity at which they require weather zones some may take a broad approach based on geographic region others may chose something more granular such as zip code.

The curves generated by the adapter reflect a normalized output and within the power flow analysis will be applied against the device specific kW output. The number of PV generation curves that represent varying levels of cloud cover is configurable; some customers may require more granularity for accurate results. For example one customer may deem that only three profiles are needed to represent Sunny, Partly, and Cloudy. Another customer may configure this with 10 different levels of cloud cover for more granularity. During PV profile generation the adapter first creates a max output curve based on the location and time of year. The adapter then creates the various profiles based on customer provided scale factors to represent output based on different levels of cloud cover. For example a customer may say Sunny = 100%, Partly Cloudy=70%, Cloudy = 40%, etc.