Gone are the days when a solar power plant proprietor could treat operations and maintenance as annoying afterthoughts. The outdated mentality of “the arrays are generating energy” has given way to “how can I ensure the optimum performance of my solar asset and the income it generates?”
This article was contributed by Martin Rogers, vice president of worldwide customer service and support at Enphase Energy and manager of the Enphase Energy Service (EES) group.
As gigawatts of solar assets come online every month, the new mantra has become “Am I getting the best possible performance from my investment?” Without professionally managed systems and strong O&M practices, you can be assured that your asset is underperforming.
What does solar O&M 2.0 look like? Here are four trends to watch for in the coming years.
Trend 1: Changing market dynamics
A new breed of asset owner is coming on the scene. These financially savvy owners buy up bundles of solar assets as an investment. They will want 100% assurance that these assets are producing at the highest possible level before they invest. Clearly this means that the assets should be properly maintained and producing at or above their assumed production levels. Marketability and prices will suffer for systems that cannot prove their performance or show convincing maintenance records.
Put another way, if you buy a used car and the owners can’t prove they regularly changed the oil, you’ll wonder if you’re buying a lemon or a gem. It’ll affect the perceived and actual value of that car, and the same could be said for solar assets.
Trend 2: Masters of data
Remember Ben Franklin’s adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? The same can be said for solar O&M. Intelligent monitoring and granular data acquisition can no longer be considered a luxury for system owners or O&M providers. Data acquisition and understanding are core elements of preventive and preemptive maintenance.
Terabytes of data flow daily from the growing number of solar installations and provide a treasure trove of system and fleet behavior and performance, as well as actionable troubleshooting information. The days of blindly rolling a maintenance team every time an “issue” pops up are over. And when it’s necessary to get a team onsite, in-depth data analysis and remote diagnosis efforts will prepare them for the task at hand, boosting operational efficiency and reducing labor and materials cost.
Trend 3: Retrofits, rebuilds and warranties
As systems age, things may break down, underperform or need to be completely replaced. With many of the solar plants built over the past 10 years, however, some of the component suppliers as well as the EPCs/installers have gone out of business or left the industry.
The inability to procure modules, mounts and inverters from defunct companies means more retrofitting and rebuilding of systems will end up on the O&M provider’s menu. Over time, it will be difficult to get parts, even for now-current PV systems. Since we’re talking about 20- or 25-year asset life, once those parts become unavailable, the components and systems will have to be rebuilt or replaced.
If the system has not been professionally maintained, there’s also the high likelihood of a warranty becoming invalid. When a string inverter is sent back to the manufacturer and the device hasn’t been properly maintained, the manufacturer will likely void the warranty and the asset owner will have to pay for the replacement system.
Up until now, the industry has been extremely generous and has provided repaired units free of charge. I expect more suppliers to forgo free giveaways of replacement units to owners who didn’t maintain their products.
Trend 4: Training for solar-plus-storage and more
Solar O&M may not be rocket science, but it still takes a properly trained team to carry out the mission. It’s not going to get any easier to find people with the needed skill sets. While current solar O&M responsibilities are mostly limited to the upkeep and optimization of residential, commercial and utility PV assets, the dawn of the era of behind-the-meter storage and distributed generation energy management has broken.
This means technicians will need to be fully trained and versed in multiple technologies to help operate and maintain ever-more complex systems. Service providers will need to have expertise in working on the entire home or business energy envelope, soup to nuts, from EV car chargers to batteries to very complex energy management systems. Companies not already planning for this paradigm shift in clean energy O&M will find themselves playing catch-up when these integrated solutions become the norm rather than the exception.
Billions and billions
The smart money is on the role of solar O&M growing in importance and value. With the addressable market approaching a billion dollars in the United States alone, stakeholders are taking note. The O&M sector will grow exponentially as will the challenge to wring the best performance out of all those clean energy assets.
