Installers are aware about this situation: the PV plant has been installed with an integrated PV monitoring system. And now the question arises, who will look after the reports and error notifications in the future.
Binsdorf/Geislingen, Germany, August 22, 2017 – In some cases, the customers take care of monitoring their PV plants themselves – and according to the monitoring feedback, this might end up in a lot of workload. In such cases, problems can easily slip by undetected, leading to high yield losses. Another option is that the installers enter into a service contract with their customers to monitor and service the PV plants. Such service contracts normally benefit both parties. The customer can sit back and relax since a PV professional is taking care of everything and is always available, if a problem occurs. Monitoring and service agreements offer installers the option to establish and expand their customer base as well.
Every service, of course, involves a certain amount of time that is agreed upon by the installers. In practice, this means analyzing incoming error notifications and the possible causes, e.g. detecting a string failure and fixing the problem.
When monitoring a small number of plants, this is not a major problem. However, as the number of plants increases, so does the amount of time resources. Daily monitoring and error reports in particular require a considerable amount of time. Solare Datensysteme GmbH, for example, offers this support with the “Solar-Log™ WEB-4U” service. The technical expert team from the monitoring system manufacturer takes care of the PV monitoring directly, if requested. In this process, all incoming error notifications are analyzed, evaluated and proactively reported to the installers.
