A basic tenet of any introductory philosophy course teaches two critical questions for life; how do we know what we don’t know, and can we really know anything? Solar component manufacturers, investors and installers often ask themselves a version of these existential questions. How do we know what we know about solar products like modules, inverters or other power electronics? Can we really know enough to be confident in our product selection?
Today, the majority of manufacturers use small test beds in their hometown regions to determine how product generations behave over time. This testing process is often crude at best. How can a 25-kW field array in typically overcast Germany tell us how a 100-MW installation will behave on the rooftops of Southern California?
These test beds may not catch the issue of performance induced degradation the industry scrambled over last year. The practice also doesn’t catch issues with some mechanical junction box failures. These issues may only be the tip of the proverbial iceberg concerning the technical issues small test bed arrays may not be able to determine. Do we have the luxury to wait for another one?
To better assess these and future technology issues, solar as an industry needs greater access to global caches of data and improved analytical capabilities. Yet, today, solar data is trapped in silos of proprietary databases, and in the data logs of manufacturers. Quite often the only window into this data for most is what’s listed on product stickers.
The solar industry is stuck in a pre-digital, pre-internet version of the world. At best, installers have daunting data-entry tasks to try to overcome these issues. At worst, the data is ignored completely, with an “install and pray” strategy.
To date, the solar industry has gotten away with this pre-digital inefficiency. Yet, switching from the current method of spot checking for quality control and using snippets of data, to a system of holistic product lifecycle tracking and standardization can yield larger, richer data sets on project performance.
No one company has the resources to do this all by themselves. The leveraging of big data like this, has been proven time and again in other industries, such as finance, healthcare, retail and more. If solar component manufacturers track all products from production line, to factory gate, to the field and throughout the lifecycle, the industry would not only have better data, we would likely see better, more efficient or less costly products; eventually, perhaps both.
Once a company can collect data from all their products in the field, it could be easier to identify trends and abnormalities in terms of high and low performers. Then, by determining if those abnormalities stem from environmental conditions, or the specific production batches, OEMs could improve manufacturing processes in the future.
Installers, investors, and manufacturers all benefits from better data leading to better products. But one of the key advantages this system provides to installers is the potential for greater data transparency. Currently, many installers set up micro-test projects to test racking, modules and inverters. But once manufacturers adopt a product lifecycle tracking system, it would be significantly easier to normalize product data across companies. They would simply have much larger and more representative samples. This could also help encourage low preforming suppliers to improve their quality, or be more truthful to the industry.
Industry groups like PV 2.0 are developing and instilling practices to collect data throughout a solar product’s lifecycle. Using that data to improve manufacturing practices and sharing it with the rest of the industry will help installers choose better products and allow for more informed purchasing decisions.
The goal of PV 2.0 is to reward high-quality manufacturers and encourage an increase in product quality, while at the same time attracting more investments to the solar industry. It’s time to lift the veil on solar data.
By James Bickford, a 5-year veteran of Tigo Energy. At Tigo, James has served in executive roles including Director of Asia Pacific based in Shanghai and is currently Director of Global OEM channels. Before Tigo, James co-founded Valence Energy, an energy efficiency software company in Silicon Valley, which was acquired in 2009. James has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Santa Clara University where he successfully led the first Solar Decathlon in the school’s history to a third place finish in the Department of Energy competition. James serves on several boards today, including the Solar Decathlon Alumni and the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University.
[1] http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/post/rec-to-recall-all-of-their-solar-panels-from-2008-report
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