Overview
American Capital Energy (ACE) is comprised of a team of solar project integration professionals that are focused on providing solar power systems - front to back. Their team specializes in every phase of solar power system integration, including the following:
- Financial Analysis
- Complete System Design
- Material Procurement
- Complete Project Management
- Installation
- Operational Training
- Maintenance
Their experience drives cost-efficient solutions with maximum financial and production returns. ACE holds operations and maintenance contracts for most of their deployed solar projects. In order to manage the day-to-day performance of each solar project, ACE uses Fat Spaniel’s solutions to provide real-time data monitoring and analytics for each asset in their portfolio. With this software service, ACE can receive events and alarms for each installation if a problem exists and they can track performance degradation across one or more projects.
Challenge
With the complexity of managing multiple solar projects and the problems that are associated with them, ACE’s technical staff was inundated with orchestrating field teams to diagnose and address on-site issues. This caused possible voids on performance, operations, and maintenance contracts that were being held by ACE.
Solution
The implemented solution to ACE’s challenges was Fat Spaniel Technologies’ Solar Operations ServicesTM. Solar Operations Services provides proactive management and monitoring for a portfolio of Fat Spaniel-enabled solar PV plant sites. The Solar Operations Services solution gives customers the choice of using existing field service personnel, or optionally contracting a team by choosing qualified personnel from a list maintained by Fat Spaniel.
Solar Operations Services includes:
- Calibration of Performance Ratio Metrics
- Customized Asset Naming
- Remote monitoring of a portfolio of PV plants
- Analysis of performance and operations
- Proactive management for optimized ROI
- Dispatching of separately contracted third-party field service personnel
Key Features and Benefits:
- During the initialization phase your designated Solar Operations Services Engineer will work directly with you to calibrate your plants, related assets, and algorithms
- Fat Spaniel Support team monitors portfolios on a daily basis and receives all alerts related to the portfolio
- Fat Spaniel Solar Operations Services Engineer proactively contacts customers and provides analysis of fault condition
- Fat Spaniel Solar Operations Services Engineer provides determination of probable causality of fault and works directly with customer team in resolving fault
- Designated Fat Spaniel Solar Operations Services Engineer works with customers in refining Alerts and escalation process and consults with customer to understand topology and overall business environment.
- Designated Fat Spaniel Solar Operations Services Engineer works with customer in applying appropriate Performance Ratios. Customer is notified within four hours of monitored service failure or degradation.
- Fat Spaniel Support is available 24×7
Result
In an increasing portfolio of projects, Solar Operations Services not only increased project up-time but also maximized new project commissioning and deployment. Ryan McDonald from ACE was quoted saying, “On each issue that was not straightforward or obvious, the service saved me an average of two hours to diagnose and resolve the issue. If you are interested in accurate error diagnosis and timely resolutions on your solar projects, then I would highly recommend Solar Operations Services from Fat Spaniel.”
The time and resource savings that Solar Operations Services provided quickly paid for the initial investment. Solar Operations Services also helped ACE to maintain their high standard of performance across all of their solar projects. Solar Operations Services provided ACE with reliability and solar domain expertise, in turn, minimizing internal resources and performance contract violations.