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Energy & Efficiency Case Study

Environmental services company avoids 65k in losses thanks to Photovoltaic

We care about the environ-ment but we are also a busi-ness. Inspiring helped us a lot in increasing our revenues.

Gianluca Fabrizi, Director of Operations

Customer Profile

Inspiring Software has worked with a lot of compa-nies in the services field. One of them is an interna-tional group of companies that deal with every aspect of environmentally-friendly power genera-tion and provide services and solutions for the crea-tion of green businesses. The group started in 1989 as a manufacturer of stainless steel tanks and plants for the chemical, oenological, and food industry. Thanks to multidisciplinary staff it is now involved in activities such as: environmental study, planning and evaluation; urban sanitation services; landfill gas energy recovery facilities and photovoltaic plants; and construction and management of waste recovery and disposal plants.

Inspiring Software did a successful project with the photovoltaic operations of this group (design and implementation of photovoltaic plants). They manage 4 plants with capacity ranging from 1MWp to 4MWp, for a total amount of 9MWp. They own one 4MWp plant and manage the other three on behalf of their customers.

Customer Needs

Since the group is in charge of the management of power plants, they have to assure plant availability, maintain performance over the time and take care of maintenance (from the preventive one to the reac-tive one). The problem was in optimizing plant control and coordinating maintenance activities with-out compromising generated profits and without increasing maintenance costs. With the standard monitoring systems provided by panel manufactur-ers, the customer could not manage multiple plants. They were wasting a lot of time navigating separate systems for different customers. The customer wanted to simultaneously (1) check production and efficiency (2) check the status of every single plant element (from a single panel to a transformer substation), and (3) verify that the system is always on-line and connected. Furthermore, the customer wanted to control both site meters (supplier’s ones) and GSE’s ones in order to consider profits deriving from the sold energy and the generation incentives.

SOLAR

Inspiring Software’s project goal was to integrate the group’s PV management processes using our Photovoltaic module.

The Inspiring Software Solution

Inspiring Software proposed Photovoltaic because it simultaneously checks plant efficiency and plant availability, meaning that it optimizes the power generation process and also the selling of the produced energy. The idea for the project was to provide a centralized PV management workstation, from which the company would be able to control many plants for different customers.

Inspiring Software installed at the group’s head-quarters the Photovoltaic module which connects to the PV elements and to the existing meters and control systems and acquires data directly from weather stations, inverters and panels. The software already supported communication proto-cols for the plant elements (for example inverter Power-One) so the installation was easy and fast.

Thanks to the monitoring functionality of Photovol-taic our customer is now able to verify the status and performance of every single plant element. They can browse an intuitive synoptic representa-tion of the plant and a KPIs dashboard. They can also generate complete reports that demonstrate the effectiveness of their services and the status of the PV plants. Our customer scheduled those reports to be automatically sent to the final client on regular intervals or upon condition. From a mainte-nance point of view Photovoltaic allows our customer to receive alerts related to problems at any level of the plant. Therefore, if a big problem appeared, only the main cause is displayed. This

1 GSE grants incentives for generated energy from renewable sources.

helped in solving the problem of receiving tons of alerts for single elements which had to be digested and inves-tigated by the maintenance team.

After operating Photovoltaic at their 4MW plant, our customer reported some results. For a 4MW plant the economic loss in production is estimated at €6,500 per day. In July Photovoltaic detected a malfunction at the plant which caused it to shut down. The plant manager was able to see from his dashboard that the fault was in a transformer substation. This information made it possible to arrange the problem to be fixed in 8 hours. The plant manager evaluated that normally it would have taken 5 days to identify and fix one such problem. Instead, this time it took them only 8 hours, preventing €30,000 worth of losses. Since the software also provides a forecasted production for the following days, the customer could now easily decide when to perform scheduled maintenance, doing it when the forecasted production is lower. This resulted in higher yearly revenues by €20,000. The customer also set up alarms on panel efficiency. They implemented a formula that evaluated the economical break-even point on when to perform a panel cleaning. They now receive an alert every time the value is near the optimum one, and are able to schedule maintenance in two weeks’ time. This resulted in a €15,000 gain coming from higher revenue due to increased production and avoided unnecessary maintenance costs.

Currently the environmental group is installing Photo-voltaic on all their new plants and is managing all their PV operations in Italy and Tunisia from the same work-station.

Via Enrico Fermi, 5ASalò, BS 25087, ItalyTel. +39 0365 520098www.inspiringsoftware.comintsupport@inspiringsoftware.com

Inspiringsoftware

®

Inspiring Software International

Customer Profile

Inspiring Software has worked with a lot of compa-nies in the services field. One of them is an interna-tional group of companies that deal with every aspect of environmentally-friendly power genera-tion and provide services and solutions for the crea-tion of green businesses. The group started in 1989 as a manufacturer of stainless steel tanks and plants for the chemical, oenological, and food industry. Thanks to multidisciplinary staff it is now involved in activities such as: environmental study, planning and evaluation; urban sanitation services; landfill gas energy recovery facilities and photovoltaic plants; and construction and management of waste recovery and disposal plants.

Inspiring Software did a successful project with the photovoltaic operations of this group (design and implementation of photovoltaic plants). They manage 4 plants with capacity ranging from 1MWp to 4MWp, for a total amount of 9MWp. They own one 4MWp plant and manage the other three on behalf of their customers.

Customer Needs

Since the group is in charge of the management of power plants, they have to assure plant availability, maintain performance over the time and take care of maintenance (from the preventive one to the reac-tive one). The problem was in optimizing plant control and coordinating maintenance activities with-out compromising generated profits and without increasing maintenance costs. With the standard monitoring systems provided by panel manufactur-ers, the customer could not manage multiple plants. They were wasting a lot of time navigating separate systems for different customers. The customer wanted to simultaneously (1) check production and efficiency (2) check the status of every single plant element (from a single panel to a transformer substation), and (3) verify that the system is always on-line and connected. Furthermore, the customer wanted to control both site meters (supplier’s ones) and GSE’s ones in order to consider profits deriving from the sold energy and the generation incentives.

CONTACT

RESULTS• A system for real-time control of a PV plant with integrated maintenance manage-ment and production optimization;

• 30,000 € in higher revenues due to avoided losses;

• 20,000 € in higher revenues due to improved maintenance management;

• 15,000 € in higher revenues due to more production.

Inspiring Software’s project goal was to integrate the group’s PV management processes using our Photovoltaic module.

The Inspiring Software Solution

Inspiring Software proposed Photovoltaic because it simultaneously checks plant efficiency and plant availability, meaning that it optimizes the power generation process and also the selling of the produced energy. The idea for the project was to provide a centralized PV management workstation, from which the company would be able to control many plants for different customers.

Inspiring Software installed at the group’s head-quarters the Photovoltaic module which connects to the PV elements and to the existing meters and control systems and acquires data directly from weather stations, inverters and panels. The software already supported communication proto-cols for the plant elements (for example inverter Power-One) so the installation was easy and fast.

Thanks to the monitoring functionality of Photovol-taic our customer is now able to verify the status and performance of every single plant element. They can browse an intuitive synoptic representa-tion of the plant and a KPIs dashboard. They can also generate complete reports that demonstrate the effectiveness of their services and the status of the PV plants. Our customer scheduled those reports to be automatically sent to the final client on regular intervals or upon condition. From a mainte-nance point of view Photovoltaic allows our customer to receive alerts related to problems at any level of the plant. Therefore, if a big problem appeared, only the main cause is displayed. This

helped in solving the problem of receiving tons of alerts for single elements which had to be digested and inves-tigated by the maintenance team.

After operating Photovoltaic at their 4MW plant, our customer reported some results. For a 4MW plant the economic loss in production is estimated at €6,500 per day. In July Photovoltaic detected a malfunction at the plant which caused it to shut down. The plant manager was able to see from his dashboard that the fault was in a transformer substation. This information made it possible to arrange the problem to be fixed in 8 hours. The plant manager evaluated that normally it would have taken 5 days to identify and fix one such problem. Instead, this time it took them only 8 hours, preventing €30,000 worth of losses. Since the software also provides a forecasted production for the following days, the customer could now easily decide when to perform scheduled maintenance, doing it when the forecasted production is lower. This resulted in higher yearly revenues by €20,000. The customer also set up alarms on panel efficiency. They implemented a formula that evaluated the economical break-even point on when to perform a panel cleaning. They now receive an alert every time the value is near the optimum one, and are able to schedule maintenance in two weeks’ time. This resulted in a €15,000 gain coming from higher revenue due to increased production and avoided unnecessary maintenance costs.

Currently the environmental group is installing Photo-voltaic on all their new plants and is managing all their PV operations in Italy and Tunisia from the same work-station.

Via Enrico Fermi, 5ASalò, BS 25087, ItalyTel. +39 0365 520098www.inspiringsoftware.comintsupport@inspiringsoftware.com

Inspiringsoftware

®

Inspiring Software International