Operations & Maintenance
Operations & Maintenance
Thanks in large part to the recent influx of solar distributed energy resource (DER) generation, the California utility grid is becoming saturated much faster than anyone ever expected. Saturation in this context refers to the maximum solar capacity...
0
Operations & Maintenance
Many of the O&M considerations that impact cost and revenue—such as performance optimization, system uptime and operational efficiency—relate directly to inverter and monitoring system selection.
0
Operations & Maintenance
PV systems can incur undetected phantom losses, which reduce energy yield and economic performance. Aerial inspections, which capture IR and visible imagery, approach this problem from an entirely new vantage point—namely, from the air.
23
Operations & Maintenance
Owners, developers, bankers and O&M providers all want to know when it makes sense to clean a PV array to recapture revenue that it would otherwise lose due to soiled modules. It is difficult to assess soiling and to determine when to wash an...
9
Operations & Maintenance
The aging fleet of fuse-grounded string inverters presents a potential challenge for service providers since the industry has largely transitioned to non-isolated inverters.
9
Operations & Maintenance
Though fires involving PV systems are very rare, they occur on a continual basis and receive a lot of attention from solar industry stakeholders, insurance companies and the media. In this article, we provide a brief history of PV-involved fires,...
18
Operations & Maintenance
Seven years have elapsed since Enphase Energy released its first-generation microinverter system, a launch that for practical purposes created the modern module-level power electronics (MLPE) product class. Integrators have experienced the highs and...
1
Operations & Maintenance
Accurate and reliable back-of-module temperature measurements are essential for evaluating PV array performance.
0
Operations & Maintenance
A PV system energy test, or energy performance evaluation, documents the energy yield of a PV system over a period of time, leading to an assessment of whether the system is performing according to the model used to estimate energy production. In...
2
Operations & Maintenance
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is a growing trend in the ever-evolving and fast-moving PV industry. Many monitoring providers are working with utilities, EPCs and owner/operators to define and meet changing needs and to continue to...
0
Operations & Maintenance
When a measured I-V curve differs substantially from the predicted curve, commissioning agents or service technicians can use the nature of the deviation to screen for potential performance problems. Here we cover the six basic I-V curve deviations...
6
Operations & Maintenance
Do you ever wonder what tools solar professionals carry when they are performing quality control, commissioning, or operations and maintenance (O&M) activities on commercial and utility-scale PV systems? We contacted more than two dozen PV...
5
Pages
Operations & Maintenance
PV systems can incur undetected phantom losses, which reduce energy yield and economic performance. Aerial inspections, which capture IR and visible imagery, approach this problem from an entirely new vantage point—namely, from the air.
23
Operations & Maintenance
The aging fleet of fuse-grounded string inverters presents a potential challenge for service providers since the industry has largely transitioned to non-isolated inverters.
9
Operations & Maintenance
Owners, developers, bankers and O&M providers all want to know when it makes sense to clean a PV array to recapture revenue that it would otherwise lose due to soiled modules. It is difficult to assess soiling and to determine when to wash an...
9
Operations & Maintenance
Many of the O&M considerations that impact cost and revenue—such as performance optimization, system uptime and operational efficiency—relate directly to inverter and monitoring system selection.
0
Operations & Maintenance
Thanks in large part to the recent influx of solar distributed energy resource (DER) generation, the California utility grid is becoming saturated much faster than anyone ever expected. Saturation in this context refers to the maximum solar capacity...
0