Part 1 - The Cost of Poor Data Quality
The ability to make timely and informed decisions is the difference between success and failure. For owners and operators of renewables, poor data can lead to insurmountable lost opportunity costs as well.
Unlike traditional generation resources that have stockpiles of fuel to ramp up and down whenever power is required, renewables are opportunistic generators, outputting power when ‘fuel’ (e.g. sun light, wind, water) is available. If a renewable generator is not available or not working optimally when fuel comes along, that lost opportunity to generate is simply lost.
Early in my solar career I was told, “A photon only makes one trip from the Sun. Catch it, or miss it.” Up to that point, I had not really thought about how important optimal equipment availability was, but that little saying made a lasting impression.
Data quality and availability are related, because the lack of quality data from monitored equipment creates a lack of trusted awareness and slows down all of the supporting business processes that rely on the flow of reliable, high quality, information to drive informed decision making.
Some Businesses Process that Rely on Quality Data:
Commissioning
Daily Alarms & Performance Analysis
Maintenance Troubleshooting
Monthly Reporting Energy & Demand
Quarterly & Annual Financial Reporting
Poor data quality delays reporting, requires onerous manual cleaning and reviewing, prevents remote troubleshooting, and requires more trips by O&M technicians to the sites to investigate – rather than restore – outages. All of these factors erode the profitability of business operations, and in many cases swell staffing requirements as well.
Common Poor Data Quality Contributors:
Unstable/Unreliable Cellular Communications
Data Logger & Network Failures
MODBUS Device Data Collection Issues (Frozen Values, Data Gaps, Out of Range Values)
When we started Aderis Energy (as Solar Operations Solutions originally) in 2015, we were primarily an O&M service provider and knew that poor data quality issues would prevent us from operating efficiently and ultimately drive our prices up and reduce profitability. We took what we saw as an underlying problem in the industry and developed Acuity (as myPV IQ originally) to address these issues.
To address the unreliability of cellular data service, Acuity to a full edge computing solution that is capable of logging, analyzing, summarizing, and storing 100% of the data, and processing all the alarms locally at the site. This ability to run the entire monitoring and control platform without being dependent on a cellular connection ensures that even when there are communications outages, local data collection and processing in unaffected.
To provide a more robust communications package, we looked at the most common failure points: damage from electrical surges, electronics that were exposed to extreme hot/cold environments, water intrusion into enclosures, and poor electrical wiring workmanship. In short, the equipment being used was not appropriately specified or built for the operating environment of an 24/7 outdoor renewables facility. Partnering with several industrial suppliers who serve automotive, aviation, military, and utility customers; we designed controls enclosures with appropriate hardware and components for the service environment, and then became a UL certified 508a control panel shop to ensure our staff were trained on appropriate deign and workmanship practices. The result of better engineering, proper equipment specification, and UL build standards have resulted in an extremely robust communications platform that is still priced competitively in the market.
MODBUS data collection issues are worthy of their own post, but in summary, the data collection protocol is prone to errors that need are managed by Acuity through a series of real time data validations, error handling, and value assignment. These internal features built in to Acuity stop a majority of the data freezing, gap, and out of range issues common in other platforms at the time the data is first collected, preventing those issues from propagating into other analysis functions.
These three factors: cellular connection immunity, UL build quality & proper components, better MODBUS data collection and validation; allow Acuity to provide reliable, high quality data at a level most current users are simply stunned by.
In my next post, I’ll talk about how we leverage this foundation of rock-solid data to deliver value to support all of the upstream business processes discussed above.