How Remote Monitoring can Optimise Operations & Maintenance of Solar PV Plants

You are here:
← All Topics

With over a 2000 solar PV systems being monitored on our cloud IoT platform TrackSo, there is crucial information and learning that we’ve derived from understanding those systems. We’ve identified ways to minimise losses in energy production, enhance maintenance activities with informed decision making and optimise overall O&M cost saving techniques. In this article, Iwewill attempt to explain how a cloud IoT platform like TrackSo can help a solar PV installer, EPC organisations, system integrators and end customer to monitor and maintain their assets and save money over time.

What is a cloud based IoT & remote monitoring system?
A cloud based IoT & remote monitoring system is a service that can collect critical parameters from your solar PV system and make it accessible to you anywhere, anytime. Such system is capable to monitor solar PV inverters, energy meters, weather stations, string monitoring boxes, protection devices, batteries and other essential components. All this data can be collected using a hardware device, commonly known as data loggers, which can further send this data to cloud based IoT platforms [software service] via GPRS, LAN, WiFi or any other internet network. Once the data is sent to the IoT platform, the data can be seen as raw events, in aggregated form or can also be visualised in charts and widgets.

What is the need for a solar remote monitoring system?
A remote monitoring system for solar PV system is important for several reasons.

  1. It tells you the energy production of your plant at any point of time. There is not need for a person to visit the site and note the readings or to wait till the end of the billing cycle.
  2. It tells you about any faults or anomaly occurring in the solar PV system instantly. This saves a whole lot of trouble and cost in maintenance activity.
  3. Advanced monitoring system also tells you if your solar PV system is performing at par with the benchmark performance. This parameter is commonly known as Performance Ration [PR].
  4. It allows you to download reports on Daily/Monthly/Yearly basis for billing and analysis.

What are the most common parameters that are critical for a solar PV system?
A remote monitoring system get a major chunk of its data from the solar PV inverter. A good solution not just communicates with the solar PV inverter, but with other components too. This can include energy meters on AC and DC side, String Monitoring Box to track individual string activity and weather monitoring station [including sensors like solar irradiation sensor, solar module temperature sensor, ambient temperature sensor, wind speed and direction sensor etc.]. Such a solution can provide you with following parameters:

  1. Voltage, Current, Power and Energy on AC and DC sides
  2. Frequency, Power Factor
  3. Inverter Status
  4. Fault Status
  5. Runtime of the solar PV inverter
  6. Temperature [ambient, solar module, inverter etc.]
  7. Solar Irradiation

What are the benefits of installing a solar remote monitoring system?

Brand Agnostic
As a solar PV installer, you deal with various brands and models of solar panels, inverters, energy meters, weather stations and all other components used in the solar PV system. A 3rd party remote monitoring system allows you to communicate with all such components irrespective of their brand and type. This allows you to consolidate everything together and manage it from one single dashboard. This also means that you can have multiple solar PV plants with components of multiple brands, and you still can access everything from one single account.

Instant Anomaly Detection
A good remote monitoring system provides you with ability to receive instant email or SMS alerts in case there is something wring with the systems installed by you. It can mean that wither there is some physical damage or some critical fault like under/over voltage, phase mismatch etc. which needs immediate attention. Allowing you such information instantly, this solution enables you to provide a better service, save a lot of money which you might have spent in regular maintenance and keep your system running successfully over its lifetime.

Customised Dashboards
This is one of the features that allow you to monitor and analyse any number of parameters from any of your system in your account. For example, if your operations & maintenance team wish to monitor only the fault occurring in your solar PV system, this features allows you to create a dashboard with only error parameters from all your solar PV sites. This dashboard provides a lot of ease to your team as they do not have to keep moving between sites to know their fault status. Similarly, as a CxO of your organisation, you wish to track only the energy production of your sites and nothing else. You can make a dashboard for you which does exactly that. TrackSo does that for you.

Industry Standard Reports
A remote monitoring solution collects data of your solar PV systems over a long period of time. Using that data, it allows you to generate Daily/Monthly/Yearly reports for billing purpose as well as to keep a track of energy production and performance. Accuracy of these reports is quite important since you make a lot of decisions based on these reports.

Hence, even though it’s a small part of the whole solar PV system, it’s a crucial one. You, as an installer, must not underestimate the use of such a solution. If used effectively, you can derive maximum benefits in terms of savings and optimising system performance over its lifetime. Studies and our experiences with our customers have shown that there is a scope to see up to 50% in upfront maintenance activities along with up to 15% addition savings on generation losses.

I hope the article was worth a read. In the next article, I will attempt to explain the features and benefits of a solar remote monitoring system in detail using my own platform, TrackSo.

About TrackSo
TrackSo is a cloud based IoT platform in the energy management space. It can monitor your solar PV system, track performance and detect any fault or anomaly in the system instantly and hence optimise your system performance. With advanced features, you can do a lot of things which can lead you to actual savings over the product lifecycle.