1. Solar PV O&M – The Indian Experience
November 12, 2013
Mumbai, India

2. Solar PV Plants - Built to Last?
“A review of 30,000 installations in Europe by the
German solar monitoring firm Meteocontrol found
80 percent were underperforming. ”
- New York Times, May 28, 2013
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3. What about India?
- Solar sector relatively new in India – no information readily available
- RESolve Survey
- Insights from more than 600 MW plants
- Plants commissioned after January 2012
- States include Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu among others
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4. Agenda
• Criticality of O&M
• O&M – Global insights
• O&M in India – RESolve Survey results
• Takeaways
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5. It all starts with LCOE
Levelised Cost of Electricity(LCOE) – Cost of energy generation over the lifetime
Source: Sun Power
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6. Levers to reduce LCOE
One-time
Recurring
~ Rs.10-11
Lakhs/MW/Year
One-time
- 10% of the CAPEX
Plant Performance Maximization
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7. Factors affecting generation
Asset Creation Phase – About 1 Year
Project Development
- Land siting
- Irradiation
assessment
- Conceptual design
- Financing
- Technology
evaluation
- EPC selection
Construction
- Engineering
- Optimized
design
- Shading analysis
- Row Spacing
- Procurement
- Component
selection
- Construction
- Build quality
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Asset Management
Phase – 25 Years
Operation and
Maintenance Phase
• Pilferage
• Grid availability
• System uptime
• Performance of
sub-components
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8. O&M Basics
•
Preventive Maintenance (PM) which includes routine inspection and servicing of
equipment which help prevent breakdowns and reduce energy yield losses. PM is
usually a scheduled activity.
•
Condition-Based Monitoring(CBM) involves monitoring of equipment condition
and plant operations on a real-time basis and addresses a potential problem at a very
early stage to prevent downtime. This requires a robust plant performance monitoring
system.
•
Corrective Maintenance(CM) or Breakdown Maintenance(BM) includes repair
of broken down equipment and is usually reactive.
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9. Preventive Maintenance(PM)
1 Panel cleaning – At twice a month or depending upon the dust conditions
2 Vegetation Management – After rainfall and based on local conditions
3 DC & AC electrical sub system testing
4 Mechanical inspections
5 IV Curve Testing
6 Sensor Calibration
7 Security Systems
8 Documentation of events
9 Warranty Management
10 Diagnose faults through data mining
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10. Condition-Based Monitoring(CBM)
1
Active Monitoring(Inverter Level)
2
Energy Meter Management
3
Real time monitoring and verification
4
Daily, Weekly and Monthly reports
5
Performance Ratio and Generation report
6
String level monitoring
7
Manage anomaly alerts and alarm management
8
Web portal
9
Historical data trends
10
Performance Optimization
11
In-depth analysis report
12
Accelerated PV degradation report
13
Security system(fire alarm, intrusion alarm)
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11. Corrective Maintenance(CM)
1
Emergency Maintenance(Function check and 2 hrs response time)
2
Automated owner and technical plant alert(email/sms)
3
Failure analysis & report generation
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12. Agenda
• Criticality of O&M
• O&M – Global insights
• O&M in India – RESolve Survey results
• Takeaways
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13. Global experience
• Electric Power Research
Institute, July 2010
• Survey respondents – 6 utility
companies, PV monitoring
system providers, vertically
integrated PV manufacturers,
solar energy service providers
• Eg. SunEdison, SunPower,
Southern California
Edison(SCE)
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14. EPRI Survey coverage
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
In-House Vs Outsource O&M
Focus of this presentation
Failure analysis
O&M Budgeting
Panel cleaning
Plant Monitoring and information collection
Warranty Management
Lessons learned
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15. Failure Analysis : 80-20 Rule
368 managed PV systems, 117 MW (Sun Edison)
20% of events caused 80% of lost
energy generation
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16. Failure Analysis – Failure Areas
Inverters failed the most number of times, but bigger impact due to AC subsystems
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17. Failure Analysis – Root Cause
Components used and construction quality impacts leading causes of energy loss
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18. EPRI Survey takeaways
- Identify the most critical areas of failure – 80:20
rule
- Inverters fail the most in terms of number of
events, but AC subsystems caused high energy
losses as per EPRI survey
- Component selection and build quality
extremely important
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19. Agenda
• Criticality of O&M
• O&M – Global insights
• O&M in India – RESolve Survey
results
• Takeaways
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20. RESolve Survey Overview
Companies that
participated in the survey Type
A Project Developer not
1 wanting to be identified
Developer/IPP
• Total size of projects under
O&M – 566 MW +
2Waaree Energies
EPC
3Sterling and Wilson
5Solairedirect India
EPC
Developer and
EPC
Developer/IPP
and EPC
• States covered
6Staten Solar
EPC
7L&T
EPC
8Vikram
EPC
4Tata Power Solar
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–
–
–
–
–
–
Rajasthan
Gujarat
Tamil Nadu
Maharashtra
Andhra Pradesh
Others
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21. RESolve Survey Overview
O&M Contract Duration
Average
Median
Range
9 Years
5 Years
1 year to 25 years
5 Years most frequent, followed by 10 Years
Annual O&M Cost
Average
Median
Range
Rs. 9 Lakhs/MW
Rs. 9.5 Lakhs/MW
Rs. 6 to 10 Lakhs/MW/Year
Majority in the range of Rs. 10 Lakhs/MW/Year
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22. Major Failure events
90%
80%
82%
77%
70%
60%
61%
57%
50%
52%
46%
40%
30%
25%
20%
10%
0%
Grid Issues
Inverters
DC Subsystems
AC Subsystems
SCADA
PV Modules
Mounting Structures
Note:
1. DC Subsystems: All components on the DC side before the inverter
2. AC Subsystems: All components on the AC side of the inverter(including LV and HV)
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23. Energy loss causes
100%
90%
93%
80%
75%
70%
70%
64%
60%
55%
50%
40%
30%
27%
20%
16%
10%
0%
Grid Issues
Inverters
DC Subsystems
AC Subsystems
PV Modules
Mounting Structures
SCADA
Note:
1. DC Subsystems: All components on the DC side before the inverter
2. AC Subsystems: All components on the AC side of the inverter(including LV and HV)
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24. Failure Causes
70%
66%
60%
50%
50%
48%
40%
30%
32%
20%
18%
10%
0%
Grid non-availability
Component defects
Build quality
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Vandalism
Other
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25. Some comments from respondents
• “ Absolute energy guarantee should be done away with more
focus on periodic PR measurement and corrective measures
on a regular basis. Emphasis on Training for Engineers and
Technicians at field level.”
• “Major differentiators are 1) Cleaning of Modules 2) Grid
availability. All other losses are very low. Inverter and SMU
losses happens every rarely. Energy loss due to AC
system, Structure, module etc are very, very rare.”
• “Remote sites causing higher O&M cost. Gap between the
projected generation and actual is having a wide gap due to
non availability of radiation data in the initial period.”
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26. Agenda
• Criticality of O&M
• O&M – Global insights
• O&M in India – RESolve Survey results
• Takeaways
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27. Critical areas of failure - 1
• The Grid
– Major bottleneck
– Highest number of failure events and highest loss of
generation
– Unfortunately, this is an external non-controllable cause
• Inverters
– Heart of the PV system
– Biggest internal controllable cause, in line with global
trends
• DC and AC sub-systems also require attention
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28. Critical areas of failure - 2
• PV Modules, SCADA and mounting structures
rank lower
• Failure causes – components used and build
quality
Bottomline – Entire electrical system requires
utmost attention
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29. What could be done? - 1
• The Grid
– Infrastructure problem : push towards improved
grid infrastructure
• Inverters
– Fool-proof technical evaluation before procurement
– Ensure excellent after-sales support from vendor
– Critical spare parts to be maintained at site
– Invest in training of field O&M personnel
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30. What could be done? - 2
• DC and AC sub-systems
– Component selection critical
– Trained manpower in the field can help in up-time
• PV Modules, SCADA and mounting structures
– Though not critical during the initial years, these
components can create head-ache during later years
– Focus to be on component selection and build
quality
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31. Finally,
Excellence in O&M can be the difference
between “good” plant performance and
“great” plant performance!!
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32. Thank you
Madhavan Nampoothiri
Founder and Director
madhavan@re-solve.in
www.re-solve.in
Subscribe to the RESolve blog here.
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33. About RESolve
• Advisory firm with strong capabilities in Strategic, Regulatory
, Commercial and Technical aspects of renewable energy projects
• Founded by professionals from India and Germany with strong global
exposure
• Specific focus on Solar PV and Wind in India
• Offerings in
– Advisory on Concept-to-Commissioning of PV projects
– Policy and Regulatory advice
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34. RESolve Whitepaper
• RESolve regularly publishes
whitepapers
• The most read and downloaded
whitepaper is “ Sunrise in
Gujarat”
•
• This whitepaper ranks 50 solar
PV plants in Gujarat based on
their energy generation in the
first year of operations
• Click on the adjacent image to
download it
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