Capacity Factor

Capacity factor is the energy a plant produced over a period divided by the energy it would have produced running at full rated power the whole time.

A solar plant’s capacity factor is set mostly by its location and tracking, since the sun is down half the time. A battery’s capacity factor describes how hard it is worked rather than how well it performs. Capacity factor is useful for financial modeling; performance ratio is the better measure of whether a solar plant is working properly, because it corrects for weather.