Compared to other power generating technologies, solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants have low maintenance. However, O&M has proven to be equally important as Project Design and Project execution - it's the only long-term plan to maximize energy production. Efficient O&M plans ensure high levels of technical, operational, and economic performance of any PV system throughout its lifetime.

In the long-view, stable and predictable power production provides the best path to strong ROI and profitability, and this can only happen if there is an efficient O&M strategy in place. Proper service is critical to ensure optimal performance while minimizing the risks of downtime.

Failure energy losses (FEL) in the PV system can generate great loss consequences for the power plant. These include: PV module failure (such as broken glass, major delamination and hot spots, internal circuitry failure, diode failure, etc.), inverter failure, or transformer failure such as shutdown or disconnection from the electrical grid. On the next figure the distribution of FEL and total failures (TF) on a case study of 15 PV power plants can be seen:

Figure 1. Distrubution of FEL and TF.

As shown, monitoring system failures are responsible for most of the failures but do not have a significant impact on the energy production. On the contrary, despite the minimum percentage that the electrical grid and the transformer station failures represent, the energy losses associated with that equipment suppose, approximately, 68% of the total energy losses.

In the solar field, notice how most of the failures are caused due to the replacement of modules. But, the energy losses by replacing modules represent only 20% of the energy losses in the solar field, as the influence of the non-production of one module is low compared to the influence on the energy losses of the wiring and junction boxes failures.

Figure 2. Distribution of failures and energy losses in the solar field.

The knowledge of the relative impact of energy losses due to failures on your PV power plant energy balance is useful to better estimate the energy losses cost and to improve maintenance and mitigation measures. But also, equally or more important than how often failures occur is how quickly they can be solved. O&M personnel need effective strategies for identifying and correcting problems in a smart and efficient way.

New technologies have developed in the past few years to tackle this rising concern among asset owners. Preventive and predictive maintenance techniques have proven to be the natural evolution of the industry: dry cleaning robots, anti-soiling coatings, aerial inspections, and asset management platforms are only a few of these.

On next week’s forum - Grid Scale Renewables: Solar O&M - we'll be discussing efficient O&M solutions and how these can help maximize uptime and extend the life of the power plant. The vendor landscape will be further discussed and Aerospec Technologies will be presenting their solution: a cloud-based data analytics platform that makes aerial inspection for preventive maintenance easier, faster, and more cost effective. Aerospec's solution is integrated with a software platform that allow users to see problems on the PV system easily and take immediate action.

We hope you can join us next Thursday to learn more about solar O&M innovative solutions.