What are your experiences with Solar-Log™ products and services?
SolarSquare Energy has been one of the early adopters of Solar-Log™ in India. In our multi MW portfolio, Solar-Log™ has reduced O&M hassles by helping us to identify pin-pointed site-issues. Comprehensive analytics assist us in informed decision making process so that we can ultimately meet our plant performance obligations. We experienced the unique ability of Solar-Log™ to relate to developer's position in understanding the functionality and analytics of the solar plants. The integrated solution of Solar-Log™ and Sensor Box Professional Plus with a bouquet of online services such as user-management, plant-analytics, issue-notifications and dedicated smartphone-apps, makes it state of the art user-friendly solution.
Has the Solar-Log™ monitoring platform increased efficiency and has it improved your O&M related services?
Making use of this German engineered flagship product – Solar-Log™, as a part of our installations has brought in reliability and efficiency in SolarSquare Energy's plant monitoring. Quantifying various losses, such as string-mismatch loss, down-time-generation loss, has become lot easier with 5 minute-wise data available on portal. Email notification with filters for errors, warnings and alerts, enable us in optimizing resource-mobilization plans based on severity of the reported issues. This has contributed to tangible and intangible benefits viz. saved time and optimized costs through better resource management.
What about the Solar-Log™ compatibility list and integration support, how do you evaluate this service and how would you like to rate our support services in India?
One of the important criteria in choosing Solar-Log™ was it's compatibility with most of the inverter manufacturers across the globe. This brought us platform-independence in monitoring, as Solar-Log™ provided us with quality data in uniform format even though it originated from heterogeneous sources of inverter make and model. Granularity of available data, simplicity in data-export feature and next-generation data-intelligence, assisted us in better assessment of installed solar assets through platform consolidation. Solar-Log™ sales and service team's support in India, has been exemplary. Regular training sessions and prompt ticketing service backed by the support from their German team, has helped SolarSquare team in gearing up the use of Solar-Log™.
Why do you feel that Solar-Log™ is a suitable platform for rooftop power plant monitoring?
Usually rooftop power projects are scattered geographically in Tier-1 to Tier-3 cities. Typical project sizes range from 50 kW to a few hundred kWs. Allocating dedicated onsite resources for such projects is economically unviable. Solar-Log™ platform comes handy in such situations and off-shoulders the burden of extra-investments. If consistent and quality internet access is provisioned at sites, job of managing even small capacity solar assets becomes feasible.
Do you have some experience with the Solar-Log™ functions and features for Feed-in Management and related benefits?
No, not at the moment. But it is good to know that we are prepared for possible future grid requirements such as 0% feed-in.
How do you evaluate the payback on Solar-Log™ monitoring devices?
The trade-off analysis is done in NPV terms with regards to investment in monitoring device's hardware & software costs against the costs of dedicated resources on site or traveling/ accommodation cost of the off-shore resources. Lost generation in absence of issue-notifications is another criteria to evaluate the payback period. Typical payback period is 4-4.5 years.
What is the future plan of SolarSquare Energy with Solar-Log™?
SolarSquare Energy plans to standardize Solar-Log™ as it's monitoring partner for multi-MW installations planned across various cities in India. With a specialized central network operational team, SolarSquare Energy plans to be aggressive in increased collaboration handoffs between engineering and O&M members. Learnt lessons and earned capabilities through an extensive use of Solar-Log™ plant monitoring will form our tool towards effective solar asset management.
Please feel free to provide us with suggestions on future development.
Firstly, Solar-Log™ may further enhance its features through addition of O&M scheduling, suggestive-diagnostics and predictive-performance-analytics to form all-in-one asset management platform. Secondly, from partner-localization perspective, we suggest Solar-Log™ to integrate with local players on string monitoring, metering and feed-in-management products. Finally, integration of high accuracy irradiation sensors/ Pyranometers and integration of reliable weather & geography-specific irradiation data through data-sourcing partners will be a definite value-add.
SolarSquare Energy has been one of the early adopters of Solar-Log™ in India. In our multi MW portfolio, Solar-Log™ has reduced O&M hassles by helping us to identify pin-pointed site-issues. Comprehensive analytics assist us in informed decision making process so that we can ultimately meet our plant performance obligations. We experienced the unique ability of Solar-Log™ to relate to developer's position in understanding the functionality and analytics of the solar plants. The integrated solution of Solar-Log™ and Sensor Box Professional Plus with a bouquet of online services such as user-management, plant-analytics, issue-notifications and dedicated smartphone-apps, makes it state of the art user-friendly solution.
Has the Solar-Log™ monitoring platform increased efficiency and has it improved your O&M related services?
Making use of this German engineered flagship product – Solar-Log™, as a part of our installations has brought in reliability and efficiency in SolarSquare Energy's plant monitoring. Quantifying various losses, such as string-mismatch loss, down-time-generation loss, has become lot easier with 5 minute-wise data available on portal. Email notification with filters for errors, warnings and alerts, enable us in optimizing resource-mobilization plans based on severity of the reported issues. This has contributed to tangible and intangible benefits viz. saved time and optimized costs through better resource management.
What about the Solar-Log™ compatibility list and integration support, how do you evaluate this service and how would you like to rate our support services in India?
One of the important criteria in choosing Solar-Log™ was it's compatibility with most of the inverter manufacturers across the globe. This brought us platform-independence in monitoring, as Solar-Log™ provided us with quality data in uniform format even though it originated from heterogeneous sources of inverter make and model. Granularity of available data, simplicity in data-export feature and next-generation data-intelligence, assisted us in better assessment of installed solar assets through platform consolidation. Solar-Log™ sales and service team's support in India, has been exemplary. Regular training sessions and prompt ticketing service backed by the support from their German team, has helped SolarSquare team in gearing up the use of Solar-Log™.
Why do you feel that Solar-Log™ is a suitable platform for rooftop power plant monitoring?
Usually rooftop power projects are scattered geographically in Tier-1 to Tier-3 cities. Typical project sizes range from 50 kW to a few hundred kWs. Allocating dedicated onsite resources for such projects is economically unviable. Solar-Log™ platform comes handy in such situations and off-shoulders the burden of extra-investments. If consistent and quality internet access is provisioned at sites, job of managing even small capacity solar assets becomes feasible.
Do you have some experience with the Solar-Log™ functions and features for Feed-in Management and related benefits?
No, not at the moment. But it is good to know that we are prepared for possible future grid requirements such as 0% feed-in.
How do you evaluate the payback on Solar-Log™ monitoring devices?
The trade-off analysis is done in NPV terms with regards to investment in monitoring device's hardware & software costs against the costs of dedicated resources on site or traveling/ accommodation cost of the off-shore resources. Lost generation in absence of issue-notifications is another criteria to evaluate the payback period. Typical payback period is 4-4.5 years.
What is the future plan of SolarSquare Energy with Solar-Log™?
SolarSquare Energy plans to standardize Solar-Log™ as it's monitoring partner for multi-MW installations planned across various cities in India. With a specialized central network operational team, SolarSquare Energy plans to be aggressive in increased collaboration handoffs between engineering and O&M members. Learnt lessons and earned capabilities through an extensive use of Solar-Log™ plant monitoring will form our tool towards effective solar asset management.
Please feel free to provide us with suggestions on future development.
Firstly, Solar-Log™ may further enhance its features through addition of O&M scheduling, suggestive-diagnostics and predictive-performance-analytics to form all-in-one asset management platform. Secondly, from partner-localization perspective, we suggest Solar-Log™ to integrate with local players on string monitoring, metering and feed-in-management products. Finally, integration of high accuracy irradiation sensors/ Pyranometers and integration of reliable weather & geography-specific irradiation data through data-sourcing partners will be a definite value-add.
