Solar
Get the best value from solar assets data during the whole life-cycle plants phases and any role you play.
s-EM enables Asset Owners, Asset Managers, O&M Operators , EPC contractors to access to different kinds of information according to their specific needs.
Plants
MW
Nations
The solar asset life-cycle interoperable solution
- NManage the entire life-cycle phases of the asset
- NSolve the typical not interoperability of IT solutions filling the lack of communication between the different players like Asset Manager, O&M operators, Asset Owners.
- NEnables operators to be independent from proprietary technologies (e.g. inverters)
- NEnsure reliable KPIs information with reference to contractual compliance
- NMaximise performances and solar asset maintenance activities, increasing yield and decreasing operational costs
- NProvide a Data Acquisition System, largely compatible with inverters in the field.
Benefits during solar asset life-cycle
CONSTRUCTION / REVAMPING PHASE
EPC – Asset Manager – Asset Owner
- NMonitoring of the construction status
- NSatellite and drone images data management
- NCompliance assessment with the as-built data set
Assesment/Commissioning Phase
EPC – Asset Manager – Asset Owner
- NKPI Analysis
- NAssessment of Data Quality
- NAssessment of module and inverter performances
- NCheck of solar/enviromental sensors
- NDetection of module hot spot
- NAssessment of contruction status
OPERATION & MAINTENANCE PHASE
O&M Operator – Energy Trader – Asset Manager
- NMonitoring of plant performances
- NReduction of O&M costs
- NReduction of plant downtime
- NOptimization of energy production
- NPrioritization of plant intervention
- NForecast and nowcast of power production
- NDetection of module hot spot
- NCheck of solar/enviromental sensors
Service Deployment
s-EM is a user multi-interface and multi-source data Software as a Service (SaaS) solution ready to be integrated in any solar asset management portfolio scenario
Benefits for solar assets business players
EPC
Engineering Procurement and Construction
- Supervision and Control the construction of the plant
- Commissioning the plant
O&M Service Provider
Energy Output Optimization
- Monitoring
- Supervision and Control
- Coordination of Maintenance
- Corrective, Preventive and Predictive Maintenance Activities
Asset Manager
Financial Optimization
- Ensure Optimal Profitability: energy sales, energy production, O&M Activities
- Suggest financial optimization, balance of costs, risks and performance
- Maximise value for asset owner
Energy Trader
Electricity Trading
- Optimization of the selling of energy thanks to accurate renewable energies production forecast
Asset Owner
Financing
- Ensure optimal profitability
- Maximize value of assets
- Supervise Asset Manager activities
s-EM Configuration Options
s-EM Benefit Examples
Standard Package
Improve PV Plant Monitoring
(e.g. 3,500€/year extra revenue on 1MW)
BENEFITS
- NReduction of plant downtime
- NReduction of O&M costs
Advanced Package
Reduce Acknowledge Time
(e.g. minimum 500€ per fault on 1MW)
BENEFITS
- NReduction of plant downtime
- NOptimization of energy production
- NOptimization of asset's financials
Advanced Package +
Predictive Maintenance
Anticipate Faults and improve O&M Activities
5% of increase of the overall return of investment.
BENEFITS
- NBest reduction of plant downtime
- NFurther optimization of energy production
- NFurther optimization of asset's financials
- NOptimization of O&M Activities
SOLAR
Standard Package
Reliable and accurate management of any system: from single plant to portfolio
Our standard monitoring system is a cloud-based platform which enables solar asset managers, solar asset owners and O&M contractors to use all the value of PV plants data assets. The entire platform has been developed following the philosophy of business intelligence combined with advanced analytics. The success of this implementation is based on the use of techniques of historicizing, analysis and presentation of data in order to support decision making.
Features
- Centralized Management of PV portfolio
- Performance trend investigation and prediction
- Real-time underperformance alerts
- Automatic alerts configuration
- Highly interactive historical data analysis
- Customized reports
- Events management and operator knowledge sharing
Benefits
- Reduction of plant downtime
- Reduction of O&M costs
SOLAR
Advanced Package
Cutting-edge advanced analytics to monitor PV plants
Our standard monitoring system is empowered by artificial intelligence to offer an advanced solution. By adding the advanced package to the standard one, you’ll get benefits of automatic fault recognition, data quality assessment, satellite-based KPIs (Plant, Inverter, and String Level), and an advanced alert management system. Automatic Fault diagnostic system ensured reducing acknowledge time giving exact information of components affected and precise identification of issues root cause (shading, covering, thermal problem, faulty MPPT, inverter and string underperformance). Data Quality assessment is essential to ensure reliable analysis. I-EM data quality assessment models allow asset managers and O&M operators to get reliable KPIs.
Features
- Automatic Fault recognition
- Root Cause Identification
- Data Quality Assessment
- Satellite-based KPI (PR, EPI, Technical Availability, etc)
- Advanced alarm management
Benefits
- Reduction of plant downtime
- Optimization of energy production
- Optimization of assets’ financials
SOLAR
Predictive maintenance
Change your maintenance approach and give value to your data
Our cloud-based software is able to predict inverter faults status before they actually occur, allowing O&M operators and field technicians to take actions to reduce plant’s low performances. The system leverages the most performing Machine Learning algorithms, being able to detect unhealthy status of PV plant inverters. The detection is ensured by models training on a comprehensive set of input. The big data i-EM’s IT infrastructure allows to ingest and manipulate large and heterogeneous sets of data.
Features
- Cloud- based software able to predict inverter faults status before they actually occur
- Most performing Machine Learning algorithms
- Four warning levels severity to prioritize O&M activities
- Quality index trend to understand warning evolution
- Action to solve suggestion
- Easy visualization and comprehension of Machine Learning algorithms output
Benefits
- Optimal performance over time
- Reduce loss production
- Improve O&M activities thanks to proactive approach
Predictive Maintenance in Photovoltaic plants with a Big Data Approach
SOLAR
Power forecast
Get precise information from 1 hour ahead up to 15 days ahead
Our suite of forecast services produces precise information about plant, portfolio or regional power production processing by proprietary NWP models and 3d party weather data, ensuring high-value benefits for energy producers, system operators and energy traders. i-EM’s forecasting system models exploit several kinds of raw data as input to meet any temporal, spatial and forecasting horizon requirements in order to provide the most accurate performance analysis. Numeric weather prediction, satellite image and real-time measurement are used as inputs of an ensemble framework of Machine Learning algorithms in order to produce solar power forecast from 1 hour ahead up to 15 days ahead. The highly flexibility of the service and its reliability ensure to be compliant with market and authorities requirements. Outputs can be delivered through any format together with the possibility to visualize on a user friendly intelligent dashboard.
Features
- Plant, portfolio or regional solar power forecast
- Time resolution from 15 minutes up to 1 hour
- Forecasting horizon from 1 hour up to 15 days ahead
- Up to 24 daily update
- Flexible output format and delivery area
Benefits
- Improve plant management efficiency
- Reduce imbalance costs and penalties
- Ensure market and authorities requirements compliance
SOLAR
Sensor check
Get accurate solar radiation measurement
The irradiance data gathered from satellite imagery are used for the automatic sensor condition based check-up, by detecting sensor failures and possible configuration issues, also generating warnings if discrepancies are found. If the irradiance sensor shows a systematic anomaly behaviour, while a nominal on-site recalibration and/or sensor replacement procedure is not immediately possible, a new corrected irradiance sensor measurements dataset is generated exploiting satellite data (Sensor Statistical Recalibration). Finally, reliable and accurate long-term PV DC effects can be assessed correlating the sensor measurements and the satellite irradiance data.
Features
- Automatic real-time remote sensor condition-based check-up
- Sensor statistical remote recalibration
- PV plant time-dependent drifting deviation assessment from nominal behavior
- Smart monitoring plug-in
Benefits
- Increases PV plant performance assessment reliability
- Save time and cost for O&M resources
- Advanced diagnostics of PV plant
SOLAR
Satellite-based plant construction monitoring
Satellite high and low resolution service to monitor plant construction
Our expertise in satellite images processing enables us to offer cutting-edge services, meeting the need of EPC and solar asset owner during the construction phase of utility scale PV plant. The service is based on the acquisition and analysis of a row of satellite images during the construction phase. The image processing software exploits the combination of successive images supplying information about pole, trackers, PV panels trackers, PV panels and cabin units installed as well construction process percentage.
Features
- Satellite Low Resolution images every 5 days
- Satellite High Resolution images every month
- Area completion percentage and trend
- Detection of areas changed between two images acquisition
- User-friendly interactive visualization of the information
Benefits
- Costs reduction for plant implementation by means of a better management of the operations
- Costs reduction in the management of plant documentation
- Monitoring of the work
- High value information for plant diagnostic and predictive maintenance
SOLAR
Drone data management
Get accurate information about PV plant construction and thermal problems
This service aim is twofold: support procurement stage in the acceptance phase and support O&M teams during plant operations. The service is based on the automatic analysis and delivery of insights from IR and visible video of PV plant. The video are collected by i-EM or third parties drones. The sisible spectrum videos allow the acceptance stage to provide accurate detection and count the number of panels, poles, trackers and cabin units. The combination of IR images and visible images help the O&M teams during the operational stage exploitign the detection of hotspots and other typical problems of rooftop or ground installation (dirt, delamination, etc.). All this information are georeferenced and reported in a web-app dashboard which allows to have a clear overview of the PV plant.
Features
- Cloud-based software to detects and count number of panels, poles trackers and cabin units
- Cloud-based software to detect hot spots on the plant
- User friendly visualization of the information
- Georeferenced software output
- Smart monitoring plug-in to connect drone video insight with plant data
Benefits
-
Optimize the acceptance process
-
Optimize the O&M activities
-
Improve plant performances
SOLAR
Self-consumption Management
Optimize the use of your solar power system
Nowcast and forecast PV plant production data are used in combination with real-time data to maximise the self-consumption, optimising the usage of storage system and the EV charging if present. This allow to define a strategy to minimize the energy exchanges with the grid during the current and the next day.
The mobile App allows the easy visualization of the values and parameters of the battery, such as the state of charge (SOC), the cycles of charging/disgorging, etc., providing advises for the best energy usage.
Features
- Visualization of the energy flow
- Monitor and manage the system components behaviour
- Expected outcomes forecast based on usage options
- Advices on energy usage
Benefits
- Optimizing the usage of energy
- Minimize peak energy costs
- Reducing grid energy use
- Increasing of battery life
Silicon Solar Irradiance Sensor
Photovoltaic Reference Cells for PV Monitoring
i-EM is an official distributor of silicon sensor from Ingenieurbüro Mencke & Tegtmeyer GmbH since 2008. These photovoltaic reference cells offer an economical but robust and reliable solution for measuring solar irradiance levels, particularly for monitoring photovoltaic systems.
i-EM Data Acquisition System
- Long-lasting highly-robust system and complete Data Acquisition System for the acquisition of electrical parameters from inverters, strings and meteo-data in the field.
- Storage up to thousands of variables, and upload every 5-15 minutes on i-EM cloud.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
