Engineering company Solar Support now offers independent plant and equipment end-of-warranty assessment services for utility-scale solar PV asset owners. The services include onsite review of system and equipment performance as well as detailed documentation owners can use to secure support before EPC and manufacturer warranties lapse. This work builds upon Solar Support’s inverter predictive analysis program launched last fall.
Warranty length varies — typically two years for construction and five years for equipment such as central inverters. Given an over-25-year plant lifespan, asset owners face full responsibility for decades of maintenance and repair after warranties expire.
“Our independent, end-of-warranty assessments help plant owners secure the support they’re entitled to and avoid undue risk before coverage lapses,” says John McCauley, Solar Support director of sales. “We put them in the strongest possible position before they assume the cost of their own maintenance and servicing.”
In a recent project for a large global asset owner, Solar Support performed a complete onsite inspection of module, tracker and inverter equipment health, as well as cable management, vegetation, road, drainage and maintenance operations. The inspection allowed the asset owner to identify several correctable issues and get them resolved prior to warranty expiration.
Throughout the inspection process, Solar Support works closely with EPCs, manufacturers and asset owners. “Our goal is to provide constructive and actionable recommendations that help all of the parties involved get the highest quality and production out of these valuable assets,” says McCauley.
News item from Solar Support
Solarman says
“Warranty length varies — typically two years for construction and five years for equipment such as central inverters. Given an over-25-year plant lifespan, asset owners face full responsibility for decades of maintenance and repair after warranties expire.”
There are some companies now that are offering 25 year warrantees on their inverter products, so getting a full fledged 25 year warranty system is becoming a reality and smart inverters have troubleshooting and monitoring available software that can report problems before they become fails and smooth the repair and replacement under warranty process a more attractive choice when project components are selected at the design stage. For the longest time some SCADA companies have approached projects constructed many years ago and offered them a product to monitor, control and gather data to decide when an asset should be replaced in the operation. Some of the feed back given, was, “we never thought of that.” It appears some of these early energy construction projects were, construct, operate until it is “obvious” the site needs attention or the PPA holder is complaining about contracted energy generation falling off. Run it until it’s ‘broke’, fix it and run it until it’s broke again, somewhere in there it will be broke more than fixed and it’s time to replace old technology with new technology.