By Emily Obenauer | Site tracker
Thomas Edisons pioneering generating plant – the granddaddy of all power plants – today would be considered a distributed energy source. After all, it only served one borough in New York City when it caught fire in 1882.
Today, DERs and advanced energy systems are proliferating, with distributed solar energy playing a role about half of it of the expected capital expenditure for these systems in the coming years. That doesn’t apply to utility-scale solar, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley to expect will increase by around 42 GW per year by the end of this decade.
Edison was a brilliant inventor, but even he would have shuddered at the prospect of efficiently managing the overlapping design, development, construction, operation and maintenance of multiple modern commercial and industrial solar facilities – or, for that matter, at the complexity of creating even a single utility-scale solar power plant. It would take more than a century for the digital technologies capable of this to catch up. Finally they did.
The cloud has been the most important factor. It provides access to centralized data storage anywhere and in real time. Building on that foundation is an engine of digital transformation known as Deployment Operations Management Systems. They help digitize the full spectrum of solar development, from permitting to interconnection to managing contractors and finances – and finally the reporting to bring it all together. The final goal of digital transformation is the application of technology to improve customer service, operational efficiency and competitiveness while reducing costs. Perhaps the most important feature of solar energy development is its ability to improve communication and collaboration between the many parties involved in many projects over many months.
In solar energy development, communication is about ensuring that people with useful, reliable information, as part of their natural workflows, whether in the field or at a desk, can get it to those who need it, when they need it. need, anywhere in the project. regardless of the project phase. That’s what deployment operations management systems do. They improve coordination, streamline decision-making, avoid pitfalls, optimize processes within project teams and accelerate projects. Let’s look at the example of interconnection.
Addressing interconnection obstacles
No single technology can solve all the current problems facing solar interconnection. But deployment operations management systems can capture pre-application work, grid impact assessments, and proposed resource allocations to give developers, independent power producers, and utilities what they need to move the process forward. They streamline planning and scheduling through templated, yet flexible project plans that help stakeholders allocate resources and anticipate potential hurdles along the way. They automate compliance tracking and ensure documents are accurately maintained and submitted promptly.
While the project is underway, implementation management systems track milestones, identify bottlenecks and establish responsibility for resolving them, forecast resource needs, and generate comprehensive progress reports, helping managers address delays and ensure a smoother interconnection process .
These systems have other important features that also rely on their cloud-based data architectures. They enable detailed budgeting and financial modeling, which are updated as projects evolve. They automate closes based on previously saved data, documents, maps and images, saving project managers hours of compilation efforts.
There is only so much a solar developer can control when it comes to interconnection. But access to accurate, detailed, and actionable information helps streamline the process, ensure regulatory compliance, and keep the larger interconnection effort on track.
From contracts to concrete tasks
The domain of contract management highlights the challenges of communication and collaboration over the course of a solar project. The person who wrote the contract should never meet the electrical contractor installing the inverters, or the asset manager responsible for system performance. Digitization through implementation activity management systems captures performance and reporting requirements in contracts and creates scheduled tasks with appropriate reminders throughout the life of a project. This promotes effective, long-term collaboration without repetitive, manual efforts.
Finally, digital transformation is driving vastly improved work management and management among employees and, just as importantly, among the many contractors involved in solar projects. Implementation management systems notify contractors through portals that allow them to view their planned work, update their progress, and check the status of those whose work precedes and follows them, from design and development to O&M.
“There’s a better way to do it: find it,” Edison once said. The goal of the digital transformation in solar energy development is to make projects faster and more profitable. Implementation management systems appear to be a better way to do this.
Emily Obenauer is director of product marketing for energy and utilities at Site tracker.
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