Press Release
Professional PV plant monitoring with the added benefit of avoiding
billing differences
PV plant operators receive a monthly installment payment from the grid operator for the
projected amount of feed-in power. At the end of the year, the actual amount of feed-in
power is compared with the amount from the installment payment and billed. Any differences
resulting from over or under payment are balanced out. When a PV plant is operating
flawlessly for the most part, then the actual amount of power produced is often more than the
projected amount. The PV plant operator receives an additional payment from the grid
operator.
However, some PV plant operators review their PV payments and find out that they have to
give some of payments back to the grid operator. The typical reasons for this is because of a
malfunction that was not detected on time – or at all – due to the lack of monitoring. For
example, when an inverter goes offline, the PV plant can no longer produce the maximum
amount of power. This, in turn, has a negative effect on the financial yields of the PV plant.
With the Solar-Log™, it is possible to immediately detect malfunctions at PV plants. The
system monitors PV plants around the clock and triggers an alarm immediately when a
problem occurs. The Solar-Log™ WEB portal provides a detailed visualization of all
important plant data and makes possible for the installer or PV operator to carry out a precise
error analysis. Usually the cause of the problem can be determined remotely so that the
service call can quickly and systematically solve the problem. This secures the plant
operator's financial returns that would have been lost if the malfunction was not immediately
detected. Additionally, the installer saves valuable time.
After a malfunction, has been detected by the Solar-Log™, it usually only takes a few days
until the installer can fix the problem.
Press Release
The following example shows the drawbacks of malfunctions going undetected at PV
plants and what this means for the financial yields.
Case study 1: Complete failure of all the inverters
The inverters of this plant were not working for 20 days in June 2015, resulting in a
complete failure.
This results in a loss of 195.29 € for the plant operator.
With a professional monitoring system like Solar-Log™, the failure can be detected
immediately and could be fixed by the installer within about 5 days. The loss would have only
been 48.80 €.
Press Release
Case study 2: Partial failure of one or several inverters
When two of the total seven inverters are offline for 31 days or a period of five days (taking
the time required for the service call into consideration), this results in the following
calculation.
The plant owner had a loss of 1,081.16 € since two of the plant's inverters were
offline for 31 days and the failure was not immediately detected, reducing the actual
PV production greatly.
Press Release
With a professional monitoring system like Solar-Log™, failures like this can be
detected and fixed within about 5 days. The loss would have then only been
174.43 €, saving the plant owner 906.73 €.
When one compares the loss without monitoring (1,081.16 €) with the cost of a
Solar-Log 1200 PM+ (including installation and service and maintenance contract for
1 year = 980 €), it is easy to calculate that the investment for monitoring would have
paid for itself after just one occurrence of malfunctions.
Solar-Log™ Dashboard + Data Logger
Press Release
Solare Datensysteme GmbH (SDS)
Solare Datensysteme GmbH (SDS), based in the German city of Geislingen-Binsdorf,
is one of the leading companies in the areas of solar monitoring, smart energy and
feed-in management with global service for operators and installers. Since August
2015, SDS is a subsidiary of BKW AG (Bern, Switzerland) – a global company for
energy and infrastructure with around 5,000 employees.
SDS specializes in developing and distributing monitoring systems for photovoltaic
plants, with core competencies that include innovative products with short
development cycles and the best price-performance ratio.
SDS has developed and distributed their Solar-Log™ product range since 2007,
currently available in 100 countries – monitoring approximately 259,636 plants with a
total output of 11.57 GWp. SDS solutions make an important contribution to the
successful integration of renewable energy into an intelligent power grid and help to
make the successful transition to clean energy a reality.
More information about SDS can be found at www.solar-log.com.
Follow us on
Solare Datensysteme GmbH Press Contact
Marco Weinmann
PR & Marketing
Tel.: +49 7428 9418 221
E-mail: [email protected]