Page 16 - North American Clean Energy March April 2016

ALL HT PV Testers upgraded to 15A!
All HT Installation Testers and PV Curve Tracers now support up to 15 Amps. The 15Amp capability is keeping to our commitment to be the best supplier to the PV Industry.
• IV Curve tracers starting at $3,495 • Installation Testers at $1450
• Power Quality Analyzers starting at $4,995 • ...adding more to the affordability promise
HT Instruments America Premier Distribution Partner
sales@ht-instruments.us http://www.ht-instruments.com 732-952-2111
solar energy
PV Asset Management
Implementing a solar plant dashboard for reduced O&M costs and increased pro tability
by Peter Matthews
gure 1. gure 2.
WOULD THE AVERAGE CONSUMER INVEST IN THE STOCK MARKET without real-time insight into nancial performance? Not a chance. We live in a world that craves information, preferably easily accessible and digestible information, especially when it pertains to a major nancial decision.
Shouldn’t the same hold true for PV installations?
PV projects are increasingly seen as secure long-term investment opportunities. Like any nancial asset, PV systems must be monitored and managed to realize their full potential.
With traditional string inverters, O&M providers have access to limited information. String level or system level monitoring can indicate underperformance of the array but little else. Skilled technicians have to perform ine cient onsite troubleshooting on
gure 3.
inverters operating under load and on DC lines at nearly 1500V. ey connect expensive equipment to the arrays in an e ort to ‘sift through the tea leaves’ of complex IV trace curves to detect issues.
Fortunately, the standard in PV monitoring has been optimized. With MLPE (Module Level Power Electronics) devices, like power optimizers, O&M providers can remotely manage many of the issues. MLPE devices report module-level Voltage and Current at Max Power Point values over the World Wide Web. is provides the O&M company high- resolution data on module-level performance to diagnose many issues, without the need to be onsite.
e most advanced PV monitoring and management solutions have the potential
to take O&M from a manual, resource-intensive process to an automated, at-a-glance service. More than just a system overview, MLPE solutions deliver module-level insights and ensure a plant is performing to the best of its ability at all times. Intelligent, MLPE- supported cloud-based solutions also o er the ability for computers to do most of the work with automated reports and alerts:
• In-depth analytics and reporting on energy yield, system uptime and nancial performance
• Automated, pinpointed alerts for immediate fault detection
• Remote diagnostics for smarter maintenance planning
For example, gure 1 identi es module 17 in string 1 of inverter 3 as underperforming
compared to its neighbors. Today’s monitoring systems are able to detect underperformance like this and may be programmed to send automated alerts to the service providers.
Once alerted, the technician, with just a couple clicks of the mouse, can gather more data on the power, voltage, and current output of the problem module ( gures 2 and 3). By comparing this module with others in the same array which are performing properly, the O&M provider can make determinations as to the possible failure modes.
16 MARCH/APRIL 2016
nacleanenergy.com
gure 4. Comprehensive performance data, with year-over-year comparisons