We need to get the most out of our growing operational solar capacity

Solar is the workhorse of the energy transition. Year on year records are being broken as we deploy ever more panels to power our clean energy needs. 

But installing more and more solar needs to be coupled with more effective management of the global solar fleet. Collectively we need to make sure we get the most out of installed capacity. We need to meet investor expectations and target returns for operational solar assets to continue attracting record financing to the sector.  Solar Manager will be there to help teams manage solar sites, and boost our collective understanding of operational issues and solutions.  

There are significant risks to navigate in operational solar, and the status quo is not good enough

The Solar Manager team understands how hard managing and meeting investor expectations in a solar farm is. Yes: The sun goes up and down every day but apart from that, it’s pretty complicated. 

Changing weather can impact production or significantly damage sites (e.g. hailstorms). Equipment can underperform expectations, and result in long-term lagging returns. Contractors might under-deliver, or price above expectations. Vegetation might need cutting more than expected – or it might not grow at all due to erosion issues. There might be vermin to eradicate. Insurance premiums might skyrocket, just as wholesale electricity prices bottom-out. And all this might mean your actuals don’t match up with developer expectations in the financial model. 

Apply the same logic for production underperformance against an optimistic model. Small margins compound over time and can boost or hinder returns.   

Day-in, day-out, solar owners and managers are navigating these complex commercial and financial risks to project returns, but they’re not equipped with the best tools.

The future will be better: Autonomous drones, digital twins, predictive monitoring… and: Solar Manager

Digitisation, automation and advances in robotics will revolutionise the way we operate renewable infrastructure. As the industry scales and matures, operations will become leaner, cheaper. Our ability to solve issues will be more preventative. Given solar assets are being built with up to 40-year lifespans, things will get easier. The technology of 1984 is just as far away as that of 2064.

But alongside hardware advances, we need market intelligence to improve in the sector. We need tools – like Solar Manager – to boost transparency and our collective understanding of operational issues and solutions.  

Solar Manager is being developed to help you navigate the complexity of operational renewables

There are three ways in which Solar Manager aims to support owners, operators, service providers to better manage the technical and commercial risks of solar farms. 

Step one: We’re building multi-client benchmark studies specific to operations which we will repeat on a regular basis. We want to enable owners, operators and service providers to understand what “good” looks like on an operational solar site. We want to enable teams to compare their production, safety records, operational cost performance with their peers. And to use that intelligence to drive ever better outcomes on their operational sites. Use our benchmark to set better standards for safety, see what’s possible to achieve from production, continue to manage and optimise costs. And take learnings between geographies, site sizes, and equipment types to continually drive performance.

Step two: We’re building a marketplace where vetted buyers and sellers of solar services can transact. The solar services sector continues to mature and owners need to access an ever greater range of services, from batbox checks to flash tests. There’s a constant runway of activities and services which need procuring on a solar site, and just “knowing a good guy” to do the job is no longer good enough. We need to professionalise and streamline the services procurement cycle in solar.

Step three: We’re building the tools to navigate operational solar in the future. From understanding who owns what, to forecasting the future of operations & maintenance costs, to tracking which sites are going offline where and when. We will build the tools and intelligence needed for understanding the operational solar of the future. The solar energy asset base is a distributed, complicated system filled with panels, steel, wrenches, and performance data. We will build the system that tracks the operational sector, and allows owners, operators and service providers to know what’s going on at an industry-wide level.

Off to the races

Solar is the workhorse of the energy transition. But we can’t forget about the horse once it’s on the ground and ready to go. It needs constant care and attention.

Solar Manager will be there to help owners, asset managers and service providers get the very best out of their assets. Not just for the development phase, but for the full life of an asset. We’re excited to help out.

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