Maximizing solar power production during snow seasons
During this episode of the Energy Transition Webinar Series, Thomas James (CTO) and Ion Padilla (CEO) explore pertinent questions faced today by solar planners and developers whose power plants would be by snow. Viewers learn how a unique fusion of historical, near real-time geospatial data and AI can help renewable energy companies, construction planners and project developers to reduce Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) by up to 15%, bring down operational costs and minimize the number of trading adjustments needed.
What to expect
✔️ Identify optimal solar installation sites
✔️ Reduce Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) by up to 15%
✔️ Bring down operational costs
✔️ Minimize the risk of seasonal energy production loss caused by snow cover
Who is this webinar for?
➡️ Developers and professionals who are planning to install solar PV assets in snow impacted areas that are interested in bridging energy gaps in order to compensate for possible energy shortfalls during winter seasons
VERBUND is the largest electricity provider of Austria and generates over 92 percent from hydro power. To accelerate the energy transition, VERBUND wants to invest 15 billion euros by 2030 that will allow a generation of up to an additional 8 TWh of green electricity. To support this energy transition, VERBUND has decided to diversify their portfolio and aggressively add more solar PV plants to their generation mix.
As a part of the VERBUND X Acceleration program, they selected SmartHelio among 300+ applicants to exclusively work on predictive analytics for their solar assets. SmartHelio, a Switzerland & California based clean-tech company, specializes in advanced data analytics solution to prevent downtime in solar PV assets and make them more resilient. The aim of this collaboration was to utilize SmartHelio’s agility and speed to build a strong foundation of solar asset management at VERBUND.
The digital infrastructure established at VERBUND to monitor the performance of these assets only helps the asset management team in reactive maintenance which, for the most part, mandates a physical inspection of the site to zero down on the root causes of underperformance.
The VERBUND team had 3 major limitations with their existing infrastructure: lack of predictive analytics, especially in cases of equipment failure, alerts are received for major faults after faults have already occurred and undetected reasons for underperformance.
Only a 1% underperformance would lead to ~ EUR 1200 per MW per year of loss. This means that by 2030, a 1% underperformance of their portfolio will amount to EUR 2.4 million of annual losses. Given this scale of losses due to the reactive nature of O&M currently, VERBUND already started preparing a digital twin model so that they can quickly identify underperforming sections of the plant. But since VERBUND’s team has decades of experience in hydro and wind power plants and they very well understood that automated prediction of faults and root cause analysis, on top of a robust digital twin model, will be a key to ensuring the sustainability and profitability of their solar PV assets.
Having an advanced predictive analytics solution as a part of their digital infrastructure will make their internal asset management team very efficientand it will also help any third-party O&M service provider to proactively maintain these assets for VERBUND.
How SmartHelio was poised to solve VERBUND’s needs?
SmartHelio has built software with Physics-informed AI based algorithms which can detect the early signature of faults occurring in solar PV plants. Using SmartHelio’s software, solar developers have reported upto 5% increase in their revenues and 80% reduction in time taken during O&M activities from underperformance detection to fixing the fault.
SmartHelio gives two offers: access to their software (via SaaS) or integration of their algorithms into any existing digital infrastructure or central monitoring solution. It was this latter option which attracted VERBUND the most. VERBUND wants to empower their asset management team by having flexibility to utilize their field experience to further improve a predictive analytics solution and that’s where their needs perfectly aligned with SmartHelio’s vision for their clients: transparency and empowerment!
The intelligent insights produced by SmartHelio’s analytics, helps the stakeholders in the entire value chain of solar development. An overview of the benefits are as follows:
Bidding: Location specific long-term production forecasting
Pre-construction: Selection of equipment and system design for project’s longevity
Post-construction: Automated asset management
Keeping focus on the post-construction benefits, SmartHelio was poised to demonstrate how VERBUND can utilize predictive analytics to bring about fundamental changes in their current asset management practices and make their solar assets more profitable through its life.
“Overall it was a lot of hard work, long hours but we ended each day socializing with one another which was very refreshing”. – Shankaransh Srivastava, SmartHelio VP of Marketing & Customer Success.
What challenges were faced during the implementation?
Good quality, standardised data are the obvious basic requirements for data analytics. As both teams began to collect the meta and time-series data for the two plants, the following misalignments were found:
Both plants had different data formats
Timestamp granularity were different
Data issues stemming from data logger malfunction
Granularity of data collection were different
Immediately, both teams met to discuss the solution to this, and within 48 hours data customisation scripts were built by SmartHelio for both plants for seamless integration of this data with our software. For accurate benchmarking, both teams worked on the mapping between time-series data and meta data is. All other data issues were handled automatically by SmartHelio’s data sanitation algorithms.
What was the outcome of this collaboration?
The two plants selected for this project were installed in Austria. The 1.7MW plant was installed on a tracker-based system while the 1.33MW plant was a fixed tilt ground mounted solar PV system. Last one year of data, where VERBUND already knew the major faults which have occurred, was simulated in real-time within SmartHelio’s software. An average of 5% underproduction was detected in this portfolio out of which 80% of the faults could be recovered. Not only were those major faults detected (previously known to VERBUND’s team), but even unknown losses were classified.
Collectively there were 9 major types of faults identified (disconnected string, PV module damage, ground fault, vegetation growth, tracker malfunction, inverter failure, MPPT malfunction, shading and soiling) and 3 of these contributed to 43% of the losses. In 2022, these 3 issues were either identified after they had occurred or after a physical inspection of the site. During this project, however, SmartHelio’s software was able to detect the first day when the early signature of these faults was detected in the plant, and prior to any underperformance losses were event generated.
So, only with predictive analytics, 30% of the total losses could have been avoided. Based on these two solar plants, it was also evaluated that ~EUR 4000 per MW per year could be saved from the lost revenue if SmartHelio’s software is deployed on VERBUND’s assets. The successful demonstration of predictive analytics and detecting the unknown reasons for underperformance sufficed VERBUND’s requirements in validating the authenticity of SmartHelio’s software.
The capability of Smarthelio’s software to detect the early signatures/patterns of faults, being able to predict the failure and project the associated losses could be used by VERBUND to optimize their O&M activities and take pro-active actions before losses start hurting the performance of the plant substantially. SmartHelio works cross functionally with Asset Management, O&M, Engineering and site teams to ensure that their software is utilised most efficiently by all stakeholders.
Conclusion
The results from this project confirmed the alignment of VERBUND’s asset management vision and SmartHelio’s offering. On top of the technical alignment, the management of VERBUND and SmartHelio were delighted to observe the excellent coordination between their teams which sets a strong precedence to their future collaboration.
VERBUND, now, would deploy SmartHelio’s predictive analytics software on a larger solar asset for real-time analytics and evaluate that, in the long-term, how such technology could inherently change their asset management practices.
Solar assets have been reported to be underperforming by 8%, and with the threat of climate change and supply chain constraints looming, the implementation of predictive analysis and forecasting is essential to prevent a potential disaster and ensure a sustainable future for the renewables industry and the global society.
SmartHelio visits client’s solar farm in Switzerland.
Solar assets are underperforming and with no long-term plan on the horizon, all players concerned may face financial loss. Climate change is causing weather patterns to become increasingly erratic and putting a damper on the profits of owners, developers, and investors. Energy Information Administration (EIA) researchers forecast that U.S. project developers will deploy up to 29.1 GW of solar in 2023. With such an ambitious prediction, the industry needs to brighten light on the future of solar energy and ensure that money doesn’t go up in smoke.
It is getting hot in here
The assets endure the scorching sun and the drying absence of rain. It’s not just major weather events such as hurricanes that significantly impact the performance of solar systems. It’s actually the cumulative impact of less noticeable, ongoing events like temperature increases and reduced rainfall that gradually corrode solar systems like cancer. Even if every electronic is made for heat, prolonged high temperatures make the system start failing.
According to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), for every 1°C increase in temperature above 25°C, the efficiency of solar panels can decrease by about 0.5%. This means that a solar panel operating at 35°C would be about 5% less efficient than the same panel operating at 25°C.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) researchers forecast that U.S. project developers will deploy up to 29.1 GW of solar in 2023.
Without rain, assets need to be cleaned up more often and the invasive cleaning will make assets suffer scratches that mar the once-smooth surface, resulting in the decreased performance of the system and to top it off- increased demand for water to clean the modules. According to a 2019 report by the NREL, soiling losses like the energy loss due to dirt on solar panels can go up to 5-6% of annual energy production.
Solar assets are heartbroken – now go collect the pieces
Monitoring systems (CMMs) are not enough anymore to ensure profitability and prevent system downtime. Unless predictive analytics and forecasting solutions are invited to the table, making puzzles of broken pieces is set to be the only way for solar developers to assure their investments.
Historically, replacing broken things instead of trying to keep them working has been a part of human behavior, and it is not so different when it comes to solar assets. Replacing equipment at solar sites is not the wisest option to pick anymore. Today’s macroeconomic and supply chain challenges have made replacement both expensive and time-consuming. According to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), due to the supply chain crisis, developers are reporting up to 20% increases in costs for solar panels and other components.
The timeless wisdom “prevention is better than cure” holds true for solar systems as well. In the past, when a system malfunctioned, OEMs would rush in to replace it and insurance would cover the loss of power. Solar industry players must wait for months for replacement parts to fix their broken assets, causing longer shutdowns, rising costs, and the loss of initial insurance coverage.
SmartHelio multifunctional forecasting platform.
“To de-risk investments into zero-carbon assets and encourage resilience throughout the industry, sponsors and lenders should be wary of aggressive production forecasts”, explains Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics. New projects require funding and existing projects are bleeding money. To maintain both new and ongoing projects, clean energy needs accurate and timely financial forecasting to ensure the profitable generation of clean energy. With the right strategies in place, proactive measures can be taken to maintain a steady and profitable flow of clean energy.
Renew or die
Quoting The Terminator and hoping this is not the end. “The future is now, and technology is the driving force”. Embracing change is key and implementing new disruptive solutions are needed to allow users to know exactly what to do, asset managers to have a real-time big picture of the portfolio, and a chance to plan ahead to optimize resources and manage scarcity challenges.
The solar industry is currently undergoing a digital revolution but faces significant challenges in terms of standardizing data acquisition and management practices. Despite the diverse approaches adopted by solar developers, a unified standard or protocol has not yet been established, leading to difficulties in consolidating data on a single platform and efficiently leveraging intelligence to build a comprehensive analytics system with real-time actionable insights.
SmartHelio physics-based solution for predictive analytics have an accuracy of 95 – 98.5%.
To that end, SmartHelio has developed predictive climate software based on physics-informed AI models to provide climate risk assessment and algorithms that prevent system downtime. The service is compatible with SCADA protocols and CMS API standards for seamless integration to empower the existing infrastructure instead of replacing it. The intelligent software extracts asset performance data in real-time to make an accurate assessment of a solar plant’s performance and enable predictive maintenance interventions to ensure the highest profitability and de-risk solar investment. The Smart Onboarding AI scans SLDs and layouts, maps physical design and electrical connection to component specifications, and can onboard even complex PV plants within minutes to provide results from day-1.
Solar assets built after 2015 are underperforming by 8% and there are two main factors impacting underperformance: inaccurate forecasting leading to climate-sensible plant design, and late faults identification resulting in system downtime. The consequences can lead to substantial financial losses for investors and hinder the growth of solar energy as a viable alternative energy source. SmartHelio’s proprietary software utilizes in-house climate risk factors for forecasting and physics-informed AI algorithms to predict failure in real time. Leveraging API intelligence from existing solutions (CMS, SCADA, weather stations, etc) not only de-risks solar investment but also maximizes ROI for the investors which would, therefore, accelerate solar adoption, in the USA and worldwide.
This article has been published by SmartHelio on Solar Power World media, read it here.
API intelligence's potential to unlock the performance of PV plants
The solar industry has been growing exponentially in recent years, with a threefold increase in capacity since 2015. However, despite this impressive growth, the industry is still facing significant challenges in terms of automation and data intelligence. These issues are preventing even faster growth and negatively impacting return on investment for solar companies. In this white paper, we will delve deeper into these challenges, understand why they occur and most importantly explore how to adapt and overcome them by utilizing automation and data intelligence. Join us as we discover how to unlock the full potential of the solar industry!
In a nutshell
🌟Leverage API intelligence and analytics to enable predictive maintenance and optimize performance.
🪢 Learn about seamless integration with any data source (CMS, SCADA..) for fast onboarding and fast fault detection.
💡 Explore a real-world case study depicting SmartHelio's early detection of inverter failures from day one of API integration.
Who is this for?
🔧 Asset Managers and O&M Professionals: If you're involved in solar asset management or operations, this white paper will equip you with the knowledge to make data-driven decisions that can lead to more efficient maintenance and increased performance.
💰 Investors and Stakeholders: For investors and stakeholders, understanding how leveraging API integrations can automate processes is crucial to maximize your return on investment.
💫 Industry Leaders and CXOs: The solar industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Don't miss the opportunity to stay informed about the latest innovations in solar advanced analytics and asset management.
Get access
Please use the form provided below to fill in your information. Once submitted, you will receive an email containing access to the full paper.
Overcoming the barriers to a fast energy transition
As the world continues to grapple with the challenges posed by climate change and the need to transition to a more sustainable energy system, major obstacles that prevent it from happening remain. SmartHelio, a Swiss-based software company, just raised $5 million to scale its software that measures the live data from solar plants (voltage, tension, temperature) to predict failures, enable proactive maintenance, and make climate-resilient assets using its proprietary climate dynamics-based forecasting tool.
Assets are bleeding money – unknown underperformance and climate impact
SmartHelio will use the extra funding of $5 million to scale its revolutionary software that not only helps solar companies detect and identify faults quickly, enabling them to gain a significant performance boost by 5%, but also make assets climate resilient thanks to its proprietary climate assessment forecasting tool. Their mission: automates asset management to build more clean energy infrastructures faster in Europe, Asia, and the United States, where the company has recently started its operations and whose funding will help to expand faster.
“Every summer, my parents would bring my brother and me to our ancestral village in India, which didn’t have electricity. The lack of good governance meant that it took a long time for the village to get electricity. This is what sparked my interest in decentralized energy solutions that don’t require external intervention,” Govinda Upadhyay, CEO at SmartHelio.
Govinda, an energy expert and climate Ph.D. student from EPFL, was listed on Forbes 30 under 30 for his work in energy. He co-founded the start-up with Neeraj Dasila, who used to work in the Indian government’s energy department.
10 years of Swiss R&D: predict and prescribe to manage assets with peace of mind
SmartHelio is a GHI and wind forecasting tool that uses climate dynamics and urbanization factors to predict resource availability and assess climate risk for sustainable energy infrastructure development. It has a high accuracy of 98.5% on tested locations in Europe and India. “We ran our climate risk assessment system on a PV asset in Europe and we detected that due to higher irradiation forecasted, our clients could actually gain $7.5 Million Per Year for a 500 MWp Plant with a more appropriate design” – the CEO explained.
The predictive analytics company automatically detects potential component failures such as inverter failures, string disconnection, and root causes of underperformance (tracker issues, early degradation, etc) to accordingly provide proactive maintenance recommendations to users through its platform, Autopilot. Its clients include major industry leaders: Acciona (Spain), Schneider (France and Spain), EDP (USA and Portugal), ESB (Ireland), Verbund (Austria), or Adani (India).
Data security and integration at the core of the revolution
“We understood that the challenge of the industry was not only to provide speed in fault detection but also to provide security and resilience to our clients’ infrastructures and data”. Upadhyay said. As a result, the focus put by the company has been on offering a platform that can easily be integrated into any infrastructure, which allows their clients to not only empower the existing – instead of replacing it – but also to ensure their data protection by keeping everything in-house. The efforts of the company and its 25-persons team have resulted in 5% potential additional energy generation based on its forecasting and prediction-based software.
The company is wading into a rapidly developing industry, but it has remarkably few direct competitors and the thrust of software/AI companies seems mostly focused on where to install solar or make solar more accessible. Glint Solar, for example, raised $3 million earlier this year for its AI-powered analytics tool to figure out where to build solar plants. Aurora Solar is in a similar space and closed a $250 million round in mid-2021. On the installation front, recent funding rounds include Enact Systems’ $11 million Series A, Zolar’s $105 million Series C, and Project Solar’s $23 million haul.
Leverage API intelligence to unlock the potential of the clean energy industry
In a more distant future, the company envisions being more deeply integrated into the solar energy stack with an “energy intelligence API.” This is purported to have broader appeal among a variety of target customers, including solar performance personnel, solar operation and maintenance companies, equipment manufacturers, investors, bidding managers, EPCs, and on-site solar farms. Today, the company can and is already integrated with API-enabled platforms such as SolarLog, MeteoControl, or even inverters like SMA, and Huawei to leverage data intelligence.
“We will continue to focus on industrial-scale solutions, as this is where we believe we can have the biggest impact in terms of carbon savings. We want to become the ‘brain’ of the clean energy industry, providing industry-standard analytics to support the adoption of clean energy solutions,” Upadhyay said.
The renewables growth is expected to happen fast and exponentially, according to the latest IEA report and SmartHelio is ready to ensure the resilience and profitability of any assets, existing or yet to be built.
Contact our team if you want to know more about our solution in the button below.
Can advanced forecasting predict solar irradiance & wind speed with 98% accuracy?
Solar PV plants face some pertinent challenges today. Unpredictable and fluctuating future solar irradiance and wind speed are one of them. The present solar and wind forecasting services are unable to provide accurate predictions. Thus, in the absence of standard forecasting projections, renewable energy developers are not able to plan the future production, operations and maintenance of clean energy assets in a better way. Furthermore, it adversely impacts the investability and credibility of the existing and upcoming renewable energy projects, reducing their overall share in the clean energy market. As a result, renewable energy utilities have to bear the burden of hefty penalties for not being able to meet their energy commitments.
In a nutshell
🌎 We consider factors like the inter- and intra-day variability of the renewable energy resources, human or anthropogenic and local environmental factors, global climatic events, and climate change.
📡 We blend climate science, satellite imagery/data, global meteorological databases, AI, ML, and Deep-Learning to take the predictions to the next level of forecasting accuracy band.
💻 We developed an AI-based framework to automatically select the best models, factors, and their combinations to optimize the overall accuracy of the predictions. The results were more than 98% accurate.
Low isolation resistance (RISO) faults are the most common type of DC fault in solar power systems, and approximately 50% of these faults go undetected because ground fault protection devices generally do not sense the small (<1 Amp) current. This white paper dives into the technicalities of RISO faults and presents a case study in which the detection of this type of fault by SmartHelio’s predictive analytics software resulted in the saving of energy, time, and money for a global energy client.
In a nutshell
✔️ Low isolation resistance (RISO) on the DC side of a solar power system indicates a fault.
✔️ RISO faults are common and often go undetected, which can cause energy losses and severe damage to the system.
✔️ SmartHelio's predictive analytics uses AI pattern recognition to detect RISO faults and provide prescriptive guidance to correct them.
✔️ Early detection of RISO faults can save time, money, and energy losses and improve the overall performance of solar PV assets.
Who is this for?
➡️ Asset managers
➡️ O&M teams
➡️ Solar installation stakeholders
➡️ Heads of innovation
Get access
Please use the form provided below to fill in your information. Once submitted, you will receive an email containing the full paper as a PDF.
The planet warms up and so does Smarthelio.The “doctors of solar plants” got selected by Verbund x Accelerator Program 2022 to collaborate with the Austrian utility, thanks to their plug-and-play solution that can be integrated into any solar system and generate up to 5% more clean energy. A mission with a common objective: to gain speed in the transition to a green global future.
Verbund x Accelerator is a program created by the biggest Austrian utility to implement and adapt solutions to their own system for a more sustainable future. As a part of its 3rd cohort, SmartHelio stood as the winner in the category of “Advanced data analytics for solar PV plants” because of their state-of-the-art fault detection and predictive software solution, a result of more than 10 years of R&D in Swiss institutes. SmartHelio’s unique pattern recognition technology perfectly matched the requirement of the problem statement of Verbund, who needed universal and easy-to-scale algorithms to support their exponential solar growth.
The event that took place last October in Vienna, Austria, has brought together the principal actors of the European sustainable scene. Industry leaders and startups collaborated to create new solutions to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.
“The companies realized that to bring innovation in their century-old businesses, they need to team up with young and dynamic companies who could take risks and work at speed” — Shankaransh Srivastava, SmartHelio’s VP of Marketing
The team speaks
The Innovation camp has been one of those kinds of experiences for the Smarthelio team. Alignment of vision is essential to any partnership for a long-term relationship. Big and young companies need to work together to get down to the real problem (either in the present or in the foreseeable future) —explains Shankaransh Srivastava.
The seven startups from different fields who got selected for the finals could learn about each other’s journey and about what innovation their solution brings. On top of so many like-minded people who had gathered at this 3 days event, they got an opportunity to directly work with the companies seeking solutions.
“Overall it was a lot of hard work, long hours but we ended each day socializing with one another which was very refreshing”
New horizons
Whataventure (who helped to organize the event) would work in sync with Smarthelio and Verbund to ensure that the project is always aligned with its clear objective; increase energy systems’ performance. Both teams will work together over the next 5 months as per the milestones decided during the event. Their solution’s impact would be assessed by Verbund’s team with a vision to ultimately integrate their solution at the portfolio level.
In the context of energy crisis in Europe and after witnessing the consequences of war when it comes to energy supply, not only organizations but also citizens start to realize that energy independence via green energies is needed, and most of all, it has to come faster.
SmartHelio team was one of the 15 startups who were selected from among 600 applications for the Free Electrons program.
The 6th edition of the ultimate energy innovation program – Free Electrons ended in São Paulo, Brazil recently. SmartHelio team was one of the 15 startups who were selected from among 600 applications received for the program this year. Our CEO Govinda Upadhyay and Head, Business Development Maxine Cronier share their experiences here in this article.
The program provided us with opportunities to collaborate and innovate with 6 leading energy utilities from around the globe, including EDP 🇵🇹, CLP 🇭🇰, American Electric Power 🇺🇸, ESB 🇮🇪, E.ON 🇩🇪, Origin Energy 🇦🇺 to deliver cutting edge solutions and co-create the future of energy. We worked on pilot projects to commercially deploy innovative solutions that would support partners’ fast growth.
How Free Electrons program has helped us?
The Free Electrons program helped us to explore further our potential and co-create brand new use cases to disrupt the energy industry. By bringing highly innovative and visionary people at the same table, we created new way to leverage our state-of-the-art technology for new applications – using our forecasting tool, we can now help our clients even BEFORE the plants exist!
As a startup, it was an amazing opportunity for us to closely work and collaborate with utility partners, that helped both parties to understand each other way of thinking and working and thus, get the most innovation out of it! At the end, it was all about partnership – and we need to understand in-and-out whom we were working with to leverage each other strength, explore potential and mutually grow from the relationship. Discussing with like-minded startups who were highly energised to disrupt the industry and ready to collaborate to accelerate the change and help each other.
Chicago – match innovative start-ups with global utility partners to address their challenges
The Free Electrons program began with the Master Module. SmartHelio team along with other startups travelled to Chicago to participate in the event. The Master Module program focused on matching startup solutions with concrete challenges faced by global utilities to outline a collaborative roadmap for the first pilots/projects between the both. Through further one-on-one meetings, the scope of project commenced and solutions were being contracted. The whole experience was energising and stimulating. It was great to see world’s most innovative organisations gathering under the same roof to discuss one unique topic: Innovation to power the future of energy.
For SmartHelio, the one-to-one meetings helped us to better understand our clients and put ourselves in their shoes so we could co-develop customised solutions. Working with mentors and learning from successful case studies, we got insights into the utility piloting process and explore the inner workings of these large corporations.
The global companies participating in the event and other energy industry experts appreciated the prediction analytics by SmartHelio that could prevent downtime in solar PV plants. All this, in an efficient manner to maximise energy generated and optimise OPEX resources – so as to eventually sustain a fast energy transition worldwide.
Sao Paulo – finalize scope of collaboration and present disruptive results
The Final Module edition focused on firming up negotiations and defining projects for scaling and growth prospects. The event was more focused on human interactions, and deliberations on the fact that at the end of the day it was the humans who brought, fostered and sustained innovation to create a real impact. All the startups learnt that this was not the end – opportunities will continue to be developed outside of this module. The program finally culminated with a final pitch event and an award ceremony.
Want to know how we are helping global energy utilities increasing generation using digitalisation? Watch Maxine, our Business Development Head explaining to the audience.
It will be the first-ever event in India, where our team will be giving a LIVE Demonstration of our predictive analytics straight from our test facility. The entire team is excited to showcase our predictive analytics solution, which has already gained traction with major solar developers in the EU and USA.
For the first-time SmartHelio is exhibiting at Asia’s leading renewable energy event- REI-Expo-2022 going to be held at India Expo Centre, Greater Noida from Sept 28-30th. Our teams from the USA, Europe, and India are visiting India specially for the event where we will be giving a LIVE Demonstration of our predictive analytics straight from our test facility. All this in front of our booth visitors. After getting huge responses at ISE Germany and RE+ USA, SmartHelio is exhibiting at REI-Expo, Asia’s largest renewable energy event.
It will be the first-ever event in India, where all our team members including our Data Scientists, PV experts, Resource forecasting and climate modeling scientists, and IoT experts will be present. The entire team is excited to demonstrate LIVE, our predictive analytics solution, which has already gained traction with major solar developers in Europe and the USA.
As the cost of solar panels has dropped, so has the economic support for it, in the form of subsidies. The decline in the cost of solar has led to a lower bidding tariff, year after year. With prices dropping as much as 50 to 80% from 2015 to 2018, the profit margin for solar developers has thinned proportionately. Stuck in a classical case of increased merchant risk, in upcoming years, developers will be forced to trim their expenses on operational activities. Therefore, the need for digitalization and advanced analytics for optimal decision-making will become the priority not only for the developers but also for the financiers.
To support the global expansion of solar PV, solar financers rely heavily on the accuracy of probabilistic scenarios (e.g., P50, P90, P99 estimates) to structure the terms of energy deals and identify appropriate risk mitigation strategies. Inaccurate estimates significantly increase the risk of default on solar loans as an asset class, meaning the project has the insufficient operating cash flow to meet its debt service obligations.
Last year’s 2020 Solar Generation Index (SGI) report revealed that solar projects are on average underperforming their target production (P50) estimates by 6.3%, which can amount to a loss of USD 3000 per MW. Allowing these risks to go unchecked harms the investment returns and ultimately damages the industry’s collective credibility. It is now more important than ever for financers, sponsors, insurers, consultants, lawyers, and engineers to reflect on our current trajectory and to build new solutions to manage these emergent risks. Over the past few years, the importance of O&M has also penetrated the financial sector and investors have started to demand confidence that their investment would be safe for the long term. This has further enabled the fast development and deployment of advanced APM solutions like SmartHelio.
SmartHelio has developed a profile-agnostic analytics & automation software for solar photovoltaic assets that can generate diagnostic, prognostic, and prescriptive insights for the solar PV stakeholders (O&M Teams, Asset & Portfolio Managers, CXOs, Investors, and OEMs) in real-time. SmartHelio is deploying AI on Edge devices to reduce the cost of data collection, storage, and processing without compromising the quality of analytics services.
This will empower energy developers and managers to maintain their renewable energy assets consistently at a high-performance level with minimum human intervention. Early adopters in Europe have proven that our technology is well suited to Northern installations, and our experience in India shows that we are especially appropriate for sun-wealthy countries that will be striving to expand their energy infrastructure as part of their development and carbon mitigation strategies for the upcoming decades.
In the future and with its ongoing efforts, we as a company want to establish a digitalized, federated, democratized, and distributed computational ecosystem in the energy industry. At REI-Expo, we will be showcasing some of our capabilities through LIVE demonstrations of our powerful analytics and automation services. Therefore, we invite all clean-tech enthusiasts and visionaries to visit our booth at the mega event in India.
SmartHelio team was one of the 15 startups who were selected from among 600 applications for the Free Electrons program.
