PI as a Utility- Scale PV Monitoring Platform Presented by Steve Hanawalt, President
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 2
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 3
State of the Market Turmoil, uncertainty, change Daily news of failures Price compression accelerating consolidation What is going on? 2012 10-15% growth driven by US, China, India and Latin America 4
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 5
Issues and Challenges in PV Utility PV monitoring characterized by Dynamic. Evolving technology/standards/needs Volume. Large quantities of data Remote. Local and remote operations with changing O&M structures Uncertainty. Forecasting and power scheduling Needs Flexibility Visibility 6
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 7
Potential Solutions To meet the monitoring needs of this new and dynamic generation technology... What should we monitor, and How should we monitor it? 8
What Should we Monitor? Systems and components Solar PV KPIs Interfacing with external systems 9
What Should we Monitor? - Systems and Components How deep into the array should we monitor? Block 1 Plant Block 2 Block n Potential monitoring points for a 550 MW PV power plant under construction in CA Array Array 2 Array n Container 1 Container 2 Container n 800+ Inverter 1 Inverter 2 Inverter n 30,000+ Combiner 1 Combiner 2 Combiner n 7-level asset hierarchy 700,000+ String 1 String 2 String n Panel 1 9,000,000+ Panel 2 Panel n 10
String Monitoring Cost/Benefits The economic benefit of string monitoring is a function of the price of energy, percentage of strings affected, and cost of labor 11
What Should we Monitor? - PV KPIs Production Efficiency Availability Actual Expected Variance PR PI Normalized array yield Equivalent availability Capacity factor To monitor and extract value from the assets what data should you monitor? Economics O&M costs Fixed Variable Commercial availability 12
What Should we Monitor? PV KPIs XYZ Renewables Monthly Fleet Performance Report September 2012 XYZ Renewables - ABC Facility Monthly System Performance Report September 2012 Actual Expected Variance Financial Percent Variance Revenue $ 1,234,567 $ 1,203,456 $ 31,111 2.6% Gross Margin $ 676,543 $ 655,000 $ 21,543 3.3% Gross Margin % 55% 54% 0.4% 0.7% Production (kwh) Gross 2,191,482 2,147,234 44,248 2.1% Parasitic 43,830 51,534-7,704-14.9% Net 2,147,653 2,095,701 51,952 2.5% Performance Availability - Avg 97% 98% - 1.1% - 1.1% Availability - Min 89% 98% - 8.7% - 8.9% Availability - Max 100% 98% 2.0% 2.0% PI - Avg 102% 100% 2.1% 2.1% PI - Min 94% 95% - 1.5% - 1.6% PI - Max 112% 100% 12.0% 12.0% Capacity Factor - Avg 18.3% 18.0% 0.3% 1.7% 12- month avg Portfolio with drill-down to site kwh Produced Availability Weather- Adjusted System Statistics Current Month Number of Outages 0 Past 12 Months 100 500 103% 107% Typical Year 120% 109% kwh 450,000 400,000 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Performance Indices 98.0% 99.4% 4 1,500 1,000 500 Daily Production vs. Availabilty & Global Horizonal Irradiance 0 9/1 9/4 9/7 9/10 9/13 9/16 9/19 9/22 9/25 9/28 1,500 kwh Ins. (kwh/m²) 1,000 500 0 kwh Total Measured Electrical Generation Energy Expected with Actual Weather Energy Production History Energy Expected in Typical Year Availability (%) 9/1 9/4 9/7 9/10 9/13 9/16 9/19 9/22 9/25 9/28 Oct- 09 Nov- 09 Dec- 09 Jan- 10 Feb- 10 Mar- 10 Apr- 10 May- 10 Jun- 10 Jul- 10 Aug- 10 Sep- 10 100% 50% 0% 8.00 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 Capacity Factor - Min 16.4% 17.0% - 0.6% - 3.5% Capacity Factor - Max 21.1% 20.0% 1.1% 5.5% Outages Total 15.0 12.0-300.0% - 25.0% Performance Index (%) 110% 100% Avg 2.2 2.0-20.0% - 10.0% 90% Min - 1.0 100.0% 100.0% Max 5.0 2.0-300.0% - 150.0% 80% 70% Oct- 09 Nov- 09 Dec- 09 Jan- 10 Feb- 10 Mar- 10 Apr- 10 May- 10 Jun- 10 Jul- 10 Aug- 10 Sep- 10 13
What Should we Monitor? External Systems Utility ISO Asset Management Corporate M&D Center Simula3on server Scheduling Central PI server PI node Plant Weather Service Utility scale PV monitoring will need to interface with many off-site data systems 14
How Should we Monitor it? Local and remote Roll-up/drill-down Data independence 15
How Should we Monitor it? Local and Remote Asset managers and performance analysts Plant operators Portfolio Plant Region 1 Region 2 Region n Block 1 Block 2 Block n Subregion 1 Subregion 2 Subregion n Array Array 2 Array n SPV 1 SPV 2 SPV n Container 1 Container 2 Container n Plant 1 Plant 2 Plant n Inverter 1 Inverter 2 Inverter n System 1 System 2 need relational reporting data that allows easy roll-up and drill-downs and notifications Combiner 1 String 1 Combiner 2 Combiner n System n String 2 need highly granular time series data that allows Operators to focus on outages and performance issue String n 16
Utility PV Monitoring Local or Remote? @ the Plant Equipment status Forced outages Inverter trips String outages Performance shortfalls String monitoring Combiner current @ Headquarters Forced outages Inverters Feeder breakers Main breaker(s) Performance shortfalls Array yield Inverter efficiency Recoverable degradation Power scheduling Available capacity Weather data Short-term power forecasting 17
PV Monitoring Platform Maintaining Data Independence Prices Financial System Asset management Power scheduling Monitoring & repor3ng Web portals Internet Energy billing Business network Expose real- 3me opera3ng data to all business systems PI - Real- 3me Opera3onal Data Unifica3on PlaIorm 3 rd party service provider(s) Asset owner must control this pipe into the plant Plant control network PI node Meters Grid interconnect Weather data Inverters Trackers SCADA
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Opportunities and Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 19
Benefits of Monitoring 17% production variance between a well-run PV plant and one that is not: Low availability High degradation Performance shortfalls O&M costs excursions Estimated ROI for 100 MW portfolio: 366% Other benefits: Minimize imbalance penalties Lower fleet production costs Seamless transition and interface with 3 rd party service providers 20
Outline State of the Market Issues and Challenges Opportunities and Potential Solutions Benefits Summary and Q&A 21
Summary and Q&A Rumors of the death of solar are greatly exaggerated Owners must have real-time visibility of their asset s performance Trust, but verify PI s performance, scalability, and universal presence make it a good portfolio monitoring platform 22
Copyright 2012 OSIsoft, LLC. 23
Steve Hanawalt steve.hanawalt@powerfactorscorp.com 510.325.2951 24
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Solar PV KPIs - Terms and Definitions Equivalent Availability Factor (EAF) - the proportion of hours in the period that a unit is available to generate at full capacity Commercial Availability Factor (CAF) - the proportion of potential revenue that the unit captures during the period Performance Index (PI) the proportion of the potential energy production that the unit captures during the period Performance Ratio (PR) the DC-to-AC conversion efficiency of the system Capacity Factor (CF) - the proportion of hours in the period that a unit generated at its nameplate rating 26