Last month alone, we retrofitted over 60MWp of plants with our IoT based monitoring platform – EagleSun SCADA. There are several more in the pipeline!
Surprisingly the SCADA systems which were replaced were not ordinary one’s; they were from reputed suppliers. In fact the hardware equipment used in their SCADA panel were of very high quality – global brands. We felt bad that we had to scrap these world-class products. But it was customer’s call as they felt that was the right thing to do for the business!
So, the question is: Why are customers getting rid of their SCADA and opting to retrofit, when they have State Of Art equipment lying in their PV Plants?
From our experience, we were able to cite several reasons, few of the prominent one’s shall be discussed in this article.
The picture below depicts the life cycle of a typical ground mounted plant of >1MW plant. When we talk of Solar PV plant, most of the people think about green energy, saving the environment,reducing carbon footprint etc. But the investor of the project thinks about his ROI (Return On Investment). He expects the plant to generate as per the guarantee given by EPC, consistently for 25 years! With this background, lets come back to our question.
Reason#1:
Plant owners & developers have realized that Remote Monitoring SCADA is the most essential tool to monitor the performance of their asset.
In the EPC phase of the project, the focus was all about getting all the approvals, connecting to the grid and commissioning the plant within deadline. Most of them didn’t bother to validate the data in the SCADA installed. This has created a large void in most PV plants. They now realize that they need to “Watch The Plant” and monitor the equipment remotely. This awareness has prompted them to search for a reliable suppliers of SCADA.
[ To Be Continued… ] Chapter - 2
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