Revolutionizing Photo voltaic Operations and Upkeep By way of Know-how

Ageing crops and elements, the necessity to add storage to photo voltaic to make it extra ‘grid-friendly’, and the risk posed by cybercriminals are among the dilemmas at present’s impartial energy producers (IPPs) and engineering, procurement and building (EPC) firms face.

These find yourself impacting O&M at plant degree, and because the photo voltaic sector’s improvement ambition has grown so has its deployment of technological options to assist asset house owners hold tabs on their plant’s efficiency.

At this yr’s Week Europe 2025 digital convention occasion curated by pv journal, a session devoted to know-how’s evolving function inside European photo voltaic O&M featured a wide range of trade audio system discussing functions reminiscent of drone monitoring, synthetic intelligence, cybersecurity firewalls, knowledge administration platforms, digital twins, and extra.

Hind Abdulla, researcher at Khalifa College within the United Arab Emirates, mentioned that as a result of PV techniques have a comparatively easy design in comparison with different renewable assets like wind, there was a false impression that they’d require minimal upkeep, resulting in overconfidence in element reliability.

“That is at present altering,” she mentioned, including that as PV capability is increasing, there was extra funding in situation monitoring techniques, UAV-based inspections, thermography, AI-based diagnostics, and operators at the moment are realizing the price of below sustaining PV property, like larger degradation, efficiency losses or missed income.

“Trendy PV O&M is now transferring in direction of an built-in, data-driven upkeep ecosystem,” mentioned Abdulla, including that she has seen elevated consideration in direction of prescriptive upkeep, which “builds on predictive upkeep by recommending the optimum actions on the proper time”, aiding operators to stability all assets, “effectively prioritizing repairs, good scheduling for repairs, and in addition allocate their assets the place they yield the best impression.”

“We’re in an trade coming from a really excessive deal with fast construct out, which in some ways is nice but in addition means now we have, at the least traditionally, been lagging behind on even such a primary factor as standardizing the know-how,” mentioned Andreas Stordal, VP of Manufacturing Optimization at Scatec Asa.

Coming from the IPP and EPC perspective, Stordal mentioned that Scatec is doing an enormous push on automation, robotization, and drones to make sure its property are “coming into midlife gracefully” with a selected deal with monitoring module well being and degradation.

He additionally highlighted the scalability problem: “We’re deploying increasingly more crops. Many of those crops are getting larger which signifies that we have to have digital instruments and a digital basis which permits us to function these crops in an efficient method.”

And he talked about one other ache level: firms transferring into working hybrid property, together with vitality storage – “which signifies that there’s challenges coming from that facet.”

Khalifa College’s Abdulla singled out digital twins and reinforcement studying algorithms as two rising PV O&M developments.

Werner Coppye, Chief Know-how Officer, at software program providers firm 3E, defined how digital twins can provide asset house owners a complete overview of their crops by making a digital reproduction that may be repeatedly up to date with actual knowledge. If deployed appropriately, this may provide huge plant house owners a aggressive benefit, he mentioned, emphasizing the significance of interoperability.

And Paul Fontaine, CEO and founding father of SkyVisor, spoke concerning the fall in drone costs over the previous few years and the way the introduction of recent European laws that simplifies the deployment of drone options has made drone-based monitoring and inspection extra in style in O&M.

Knowledge high quality is extraordinarily essential in using know-how in plant monitoring, and all panelists had insightful factors to make on this. Daryl Lu, CEO of LCOE.ai, mentioned a whole lot of organizations his firm offers with are “caught with a whole lot of muddied, siloed knowledge” and they’re nonetheless making an attempt to determine their digital technique.

Lu mentioned specializing in how clever use of information can ship worth is extra essential than leaping on the know-how bandwagon. Quite a lot of the fuss about synthetic intelligence (AI) will be overstated, he mentioned.

Manuel Llenas, Regional Director, EU at GreenPowerMonitor, a DNV firm, agreed with Lu, including that firms want a “clear roadmap” of the end result they’re making an attempt to get after they deploy AI options, and this depends upon the size and sort of asset they’ve – whether or not it’s a rooftop or just a few thousand ground-mounted panels.

Sturdy cybersecurity was one factor that every one audio system agreed on as essential for utility-scale asset house owners. Fabian Michel, Head of Cybersecurity and Operational Know-how at Belectric – a sponsor of the Week Europe 2025 occasion – mentioned that cybersecurity just isn’t a subject buyers ought to ignore.

“A hacker assault can set off the plant to close down and have a lack of income” he mentioned, including that such an assault may change the conduct of a plant bringing extreme penalties to the grid. Michel identified that investing in cybersecurity for PV crops is essential on a nationwide degree and ought to be a part of every nation’s nationwide protection spending.

He defined he recommends asset house owners have next-generation firewalls with superior risk safety in place to guard their websites always. Coming from the EPC perspective, Abo Power’s Head of Photo voltaic, Wojtek Swietochowski talked about excessive prices as a possible problem for firms investing in cybersecurity, though he mentioned he absolutely agreed with Michel’s view that it’s a must-have. He added that legally and contractually, such options are required of asset house owners, and he identified that criminals can assault crops via elements like inverters if they’re compromised.

Going again to Stordal’s level concerning the quick improvement of the PV trade and the stress to ship at scale, Swietochowski, who can be vice chair at SolarPower Europe’s Lifecycle High quality Workstream, defined that finest practices round {hardware} and software program and their use in O&M are continuously altering. “Due to this fact, the trade shouldn’t solely depend on requirements, however typically on pointers.” Asset house owners ought to preserve open communication with producers to make sure their tools works effectively within the area. He additionally steered that repowering some crops after a decade or so may find yourself being the best choice for delivering return on funding for asset house owners.

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