Leveraging the Digital Transformation in Solar O&M

We are currently witnessing the most dizzying pace of technological innovation in our lifetimes, if not ever. Our lives are becoming increasingly more digital, cutting out archaic and inefficient processes and saving time and resources in an impressive fashion.

COMMENTARY

In solar photovoltaic (PV), this digital shift is also occurring, albeit in a less obvious manner. The most highly publicized advancements in the solar industry have long been limited to their physical properties—larger cell sizes, higher efficiencies, bi-facial modules etc.

After two decades of impressive progress on the module side however, progress has slowed somewhat. Plants are now seeing more significant improvements being made on the operations side—not surprisingly after such a long focus on improving the components themselves.

In addition to this, we are also seeing that it is becoming increasingly difficult to break into new markets without an inherent technical or operational edge. With the differences between panel performance amounting to splitting hairs, finding distinct operational advantages is now key to growing an international portfolio.

Although the physical components of a solar PV plant appear to have plateaued in terms of performance, the digital side of a solar plant is advancing faster than ever. But unlike with consumer tech, many of these important advancements are not immediately apparent to the untrained eye.

At NovaSource, this is especially true—one of our main focuses at the moment is on cybersecurity. We believe that as the world continues to become more data-centric, securing that data will become even more important. Everything we are building now will need to stand up to developments and challenges which we cannot even envision yet.

It was an obvious choice to put a focus on building up a much more robust cybersecurity offering. Establishing a companywide culture around cybersecurity and the responsible rollout of emerging tech is crucial to us providing the best possible service to our customers. If the industry is to scale to become a baseline power source, as we all believe it will, data security will need to be the No. 1 priority.

Not only is this a companywide goal, but we intend to push the industry to set better standards across the board. The reality of industries with long-term service agreements is, there is often less pressure to innovate once the ink is dry. This goes against our thinking, and we intend to structure our offerings in a way which allows us to quickly build innovative features on top of our secure and robust digital infrastructure.

The advancements we are set to see in the coming years and months will be truly transformative. The extraordinary progress seen in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning this past year are set to play a major role in almost all industries, and PV is no exception.

Finding smart and responsible ways to integrate these new solutions in short order is a key focus for our engineering team—anything less would be a disservice to our customers. If solar is to continue its trajectory towards a baseline power source, we as an industry cannot rest on our laurels. Taking stock of technological advancements, and continually optimizing how plants are operated will be a key to the continued growth of the industry, and a growing contribution to the energy transition.

Despite all the noise currently going on in the global energy industry, it is important to continue to strive for both technological as well as operational excellence. The best way to ensure solar PV can contribute to a successful energy transition is by making it better than any other technology at delivering energy—we believe we’re well on our way, if that isn’t the case already. Continuing to find better ways to safely and securely leverage data to improve plant performance will be one of the most important ways to accelerate the goals of the industry, and to deliver more sustainable energy to society as a whole.

—Troy Lauterbach is CEO of NovaSource, an operations and maintenance provider for the solar power industry.