Day 11 of 14 - The energy loss showdown - Inverters v DC distribution
When it comes to solar system failures, not all issues are created equal. The Solar Risk Assessment article by my colleague, Charity Faith Sotero, reveals some intriguing insights about equipment failures and their impact on energy production.
We’ve been doing research in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on equipment reliability and resilience, in the hopes of developing a ‘safe driver discount’ for reliable assets. In this process, we’ve collected and analyzed thousands of insight-rich O&M text logs that record corrective maintenance issues and remedies.
An analysis of these logs, completed with natural language processing and a custom PV language dictionary, reveals that while inverters are responsible for 59% of lost energy, DC distribution issues, including connectors, combiners, and wiring, tend to generate O&M tickets that hang open for longer periods of time.
Connector mismatch issues also seem to have an outsized impact on O&M time and labor, and of course, system down-time.
Hopefully these insights can lead asset owners to some data-driven strategies: prioritize inverter sub-components and correctly-rated connectors for your spare parts inventory, and have trained O&M providers available to quickly deal with these types of issues before they cause underperformance!
Find the full article in the 2024 Solar Risk Assessment: https://lnkd.in/g_jTRdEy