O&M Solutions for C&I Solar Installations

The need for a reliable and resilient supply of power is top of mind for operators of commercial and industrial (C&I) enterprises. Businesses know the importance of maintaining their electrical infrastructure, especially those operating on a 24/7 basis.

Office buildings, retail spaces, factories, warehouses, manufacturing facilities and more can require power systems that must handle high electrical loads, with the ability to ensure reliable operation of critical equipment, including providing backup power when the grid fails. It’s not just an issue for U.S. businesses; enterprises in other countries are looking for products, services, and technologies that support reliable power and help achieve goals such as decarbonization.

Jon De Martin is CEO 0f SCE Energy Solutions, an Australia-based solar power and energy technology company. De Martin said, “While we do not always know exactly what motivates our customers to go solar, we know very well why they choose SCE: high quality, great system performance and safety, outstanding reliability and O&M [operations and maintenance] services, and the power to easily monitor system performance with high accuracy.” De Martin recently provided POWER with insight into what his company does and how it is supporting a range of C&I businesses.

POWER: What technologies has your company used to design a C&I power systems?

De Martin: Our company, SCE Energy Solutions, designs, installs, and maintains C&I solar installations. As such, our mission is to deliver our customers the best asset performance along multiple vectors. After system commissioning, our company typically becomes the steward of the systems we deploy as the operations and maintenance (O&M) provider. With more than 20,000 modules monitored across well over 100 systems, and a solid pipeline of projects, the O&M work load only ever grows.

As a distributed generation technology, the smallest indivisible elements of photovoltaic solar generation are the solar modules themselves, and can be seen as the capillaries at which optimized generation, essential data monitoring, and system safety begin. In short, control of a solar system starts at the module, and Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE) puts that control on a single pane of glass. This level of control is a benefit to system owners as well as our O&M team, and we have used Tigo Energy optimizers for many years.

As with nearly all electronics-driven technologies, however, great hardware is no longer enough. In fact, the “software-defined” prefix continues to be correctly attached to products which rely more on software than the underlying hardware to create value.

When module-level control and data resolution are combined with a capable software platform, system command and control become truly powerful. The waves of data produced by module-level resolution only become useful if they are actionable. More to the point, our O&M team would drown in an ocean of noise without a tool that filters out the signal.

This is what the Energy Intelligence (EI) Platform from Tigo does for SCE Energy Solutions. With sophisticated analytics, customizable alert thresholds, and a focus on minimizing alert fatigue, our monitoring platform delivers value which begins during the installation phase and lasts throughout the service life of the system. This software is designed to help us recognize, understand, and address equipment or system issues before they lead to an outage. With the EI platform we can minimize downtime, reduce maintenance costs such as truck rolls, and maximize system performance and returns for our customers.

POWER: Do you have examples of successful C&I power system projects? What were the benchmarks for those projects, and what technologies were used?

De Martin: When SCE Energy Solutions first began installing commercial solar systems in Australia more than a decade ago, we didn’t use any form of Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE). However, we soon found that in many bids we were limited in the rooftop space we could serve because of shading or partial shading throughout the day. We initially started using Tigo optimizers on a few sites to minimize the effects of shade on solar production, because more rooftop space became economically viable and we were able to maximize site capacity with more flexibility in the arrangement of solar modules on rooftops. In all, MLPE helped us grow.

Soon, SCE was installing these optimizers on every solar installation because not only did the optimizers expand the addressable market and increase output for customers, it helped lower costs to service our growing portfolio of sites. Today, with a Tigo TS4 on every module, we get complete visibility to every site down to the module level. With the Tigo EI platform, we can now also validate the performance of each module, visualize energy gain from optimization and importantly, our customers are happier because they can see the results as well. Module-level technology, in fact, has become the source of many of the benchmarks we and our customers depend on today, or they have made existing benchmarks significantly more useful.

POWER: How important is on-site power production for C&I enterprises? What are the most important considerations (financial, decarbonization, etc.) for C&I groups when deciding whether to incorporate self-generated power into their building(s) and/or campus?

De Martin: The decision to deploy solar in the C&I segment pretty much always depends on a confluence of factors. Our customers’ solar aspirations tend to be a combination of building energy independence, controlling energy costs, and making progress towards decarbonization goals. With MLPE we have significant flexibility during the system specification phase to optimize for priorities like energy needs, financial and capital expenditure concerns, and physical constraints at the site. Similarly, with customers ranging from De Bortoli Winery, Reliable Foods, and the headquarters of Komatsu, Australia (a construction and mining equipment company), the demand for C&I solar comes from all types of industry segments.

—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.