A company that is focussed on increasing market diversification while strengthening its position as a leading solar monitoring system provider, Solare Datensysteme GmbH (SDS) is not without ambition. We asked Guy Thouin from SDS’s Sales & Marketing operation to talk us through its eventful past, enviable present and exciting future.
PES: Welcome to PES magazine. Would you like to introduce the company to our readers and explain how you serve the PV industry, particularly in Europe?
Guy Thouin: Solare Datensysteme GmbH (SDS) is the leading company in the area
of solar monitoring and management.
The Solar-Log monitoring device and the Solar-Log WEB reporting platform are the basis of SDS. We are proud of the “Made
in Germany” monitoring systems that can
be used with a wide range of inverters. Besides plant monitoring, SDS supplies numerous system enhancements providing effective support for operators and installers around the world.
Thomas Preuhs and Jörg Karwath founded Solare Datensysteme GmbH in late 2007. The PV monitoring market leader now monitors more than 850,000 inverters and about 200,000 PV plants in over 65 countries, producing over eight gigawatts of power.
We offer all-in-one solutions in all aspects of solar monitoring and management. This requires us to work closely with PV distributors, installers and EPC companies, but also with system providers, investors, banks and other organisations associated with PV. In doing so, we are able to quickly recognise and react to market changes.
This agility is extremely important in
Europe with the ever changing landscape of technological and regulatory needs. To keep ahead of the changes, we are continually innovating our hardware – and software – based solutions. We offer workshops and technical training seminars. We also have trained service technicians located throughout the world for rapid on-site responses.
PES: Can you outline a few of the benefits of your monitoring products and explain which markets they’re aimed at?
GT: It is a known fact that solar power plants only produce maximum yields when they run efficiently and without downtime. However, with the large number of components in a plant, sporadic technical defects are inevitable. Since our independent monitoring system is compatible with more than 80 different inverter brands, our Solar-Log can quickly detect faults and immediately report them BEFORE they can lead to financial losses and major technical issues. This makes our data logger the ideal tool for:
Monitoring PV plants of any size along with operations and maintenance support
Implementing grid feed-in management and fulfilling the requirements from utility companies
Effectively managing power, especially
in regard to self-consumption
Our products offer numerous benefits; the key benefits are: PV investment security, cost and time savings, reduced energy costs, improved self-consumption management, flexibility in regard to inverters and an attractive benefit-cost ratio.
The Solar-Log product range offers solutions for plants of all sizes, from small domestic installations and medium-sized plants to large-scale PV plants. We originally specialised in small domestic installations, but we have also proven our expertise for large-scale PV plant while maintaining a cost-effective solution. This becomes clear when you look at this example in Italy; this 3 MWp PV plant has 12,000 solar modules and 208 inverters. It is all monitored and managed with three Solar-Log 1000 devices, which only required an investment of about € 3,500.
