Monitoring Renewable Energy Assets in the New Normal

Resiliency of renewable energy assets is one of the most important operation and maintenance (O&M) focus points during lockdown restrictions. Energy producers around the world are trying their best to ensure they have the right measures in place to ensure reliability of their assets and also meet customer needs at the grid edge. It is critical that energy producers limit any outages and equipment fails, along with random surges in power demand. These outages and failures can cost millions of dollars in lost revenue to asset owners and lead to downtime and interruptions in supply to consumers when they need it the most. Inverter failures, cable damage, installation errors, and dirty modules can lead to generation losses. It is essential to prevent financial losses as budgets run tight for asset operators without causing any inconvenience to end consumers. 

Renewable energy investments are expected to continue rapidly expanding and growing across both mature and emerging economies, reiterating the increased need for effective and efficient monitoring and control (M&C) solutions. M&C of renewable energy refers to the software technology that monitors and controls generation of energy from these assets and also ensures the assets' overall performance optimization. In the current market, physical access to assets is limited, so renewable energy technologies face significant O&M challenges associated with monitoring them.

Flexibility and Resilience Through Digital Enablement

The renewable energy sector can bring more flexibility and resilience to power generation by effectively unlocking the power of data analytics for asset monitoring. This could transform the sector’s ability to increase efficiency and lower emissions. Integrating digital innovations such as data analytics, robotics, predictive analytics, and machine learning into traditional O&M practices have made M&C solutions effective, smarter, and more intelligent. M&C solutions are evolving and integrating enhanced digital features across smart connected assets. With this evolution, asset operators are in a better position to optimize asset performance and guarantee efficiency gains by ensuring remote maintenance of their assets. 

According to a recent article by Guidehouse Insights, cross-platform capabilities across hybrid solutions that include multiple technologies such as solar, wind, and storage offer an attractive value proposition for M&C solutions providers. Integrating monitoring and operational insights across asset clusters can help large asset operators extend M&C solution benefits across their portfolios and bring much-needed reliability to their assets.