Event Type
In Person
Date of Event
September 11 – 14, 2023
Las Vegas, NV
Key Contact
Josh Corbitt
Vice President Business Development,
Origis Services
Origis Energy Services will present a look at tech solutions to improve plant performance at RE+ Las Vegas
Josh Corbitt of the Origis Services team will present the poster, The Solar O&M Solution Set of the Future, Tuesday, September 12th from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Introduction
AI, data science and technology improve solar plant performance utilizing preventive maintenance that helps optimize the maintenance schedule for a plant and reduce overall operational cost.
The Challenge
The operations and maintenance of solar, energy storage and hybrid assets is under pressure.
Severe weather mitigation, labor shortages, emissions containment and carbon sequestration, and the reduction of adverse environmental strategies pressure O&M providers in unprecedented ways. Couple these macro factors with the move to PTC performance demands and it becomes clear service providers must find and refine technology solutions to improve the overall O&M toolkit.
AI, data science and technological breakthroughs must drive efficiencies in the long-term operation of grid clean energy assets. According to Wood Mackenzie, approximately 60 percent of the PV O&M chain is ripe for digital disruption.
What is the future mix of O&M solutions? How will they be deployed? What exists now and how could it evolve in the future? What are the gaps visionaries will need to fill? These are questions we start to address in this poster presentation.
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- Autonomous Drones provide visual inspections and infrared thermography, which avoid plant downtime.
- Autonomous Robots provide AI-aided inspections, mobile weather stations, security & theft prevention, as well as bird control to make the best use of labor costs.
- Smart Glasses coupled with Handheld Tech reduces labor costs and allows collaboration between remote experts located in the Remote Operations Center who use AI-aided performance monitoring, AI weather forecasting, an analytics platform with 3D site modeling.
- Module Cleaning optimizes washing cycles to the needs of the region and panel performance.
- Soiling Stations and Autonomous Cleaners reduce labor and operations costs, while optimizing plant performance.
- Vegetation Management and Electric Work Vehicles reduce overall plant emissions.
- Autonomous Mowers automate vegetation management to lower long-term operations cost and reduce the carbon emissions of more traditional mowing techniques.
- Pollinator Systems, Agrivoltaics and Advanced Seeding Strategies offer a range of positive benefits to local biodiversity and provide beneficial environmental risk management.
Barriers to entry: The upfront capital investment of these technologies has not seen widespread adoption in the industry. They must be amortized over the life of the plant and offset with their savings over more traditional techniques. Not all tech is yet ripe for deployment today, but it will likely be over the next few years. Investors, asset owners O&M service providers and those who operate our nation’s clean energy portfolio will benefit from these and other technology solution sets.
