Added value identification of solar asset management and operations software
In a highly competitive solar market where the focus is broadening from development to operations, it is crucial for EPC contractors, asset managers, O&M managers, project developers and investors to be able to differentiate through operational performance of their assets and through competitive costs of operations.
3E’s research and product teams analyzed the added value of a Smart Performance Monitoring solution, and portrayed its features in this white paper. A root cause analysis of PV system’s failures has been used to calculate its impact on performance and availability of a typical portfolio of PV assets. The paper explains how a Smart Performance Monitoring Software outperforms a standard monitoring system by its effective asset reporting tools, its risk mitigation strategies, its response time to failure modes and the prioritization of actions and preventive maintenance tasks. The added value of Smart Performance Monitoring is built up through reduced operational costs on one hand and additional revenues resulting from a higher performance ratio and higher availability on the other hand.
2 scenarios are elaborated. The first scenario considers a portfolio with average performance results, hereafter called the P50 scenario. The second scenario assumes a PV portfolio with low performance, only 25% of the PV portfolio’s would achieve worse results. The latter scenario is hereafter referred to as the P25 scenario. A reference portfolio size of 100 MWp is considered with the specific yield varying from 950 kWh/kWp/year for areas with low irradiation to 1400 kWh/kWp/year for high irradiation areas. The value of the electricity varies from 100 €/MWh to 200 €/MWh.
It is concluded that shifting from a standard monitoring system to a Smart Performance Monitoring solution, will improve the annual results of a typical well performing (P50 scenario) PV portfolio of 100 MWp with 128 k€ up to 240 k€ depending on the irradiation and energy value assumptions. For an inferior performing (P25 scenario) PV portfolio the impact will even range from 368 k€ to 948 k€ per year. Considering a system lifetime of 20 years, the cumulative impact will range from 2.7 m€ to 20 m€.
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