Locus Energy, a solar monitoring and data analytics platform provider for the solar PV market, announced that Swinerton Renewable Energy, a turnkey EPC and O&M provider for the utility-scale and distributed PV markets, will standardize its entire solar fleet on Locus Energy’s SolarNOC monitoring platform and PVIQ analytics suite as part of its SOLV™ enterprise solution for optimizing and managing plants.
Locus Energy’s SolarNOC platform will assist Swinerton Renewable Energy’s SOLV solution to provide monitoring, analytics and O&M services for both its utility-scale and commercial fleet customers. Swinerton’s PV portfolio totals over 400 MW, with an additional 600 MW under construction. In 2013, Swinerton Renewable Energy was ranked the nation’s top commercial solar contractor by Solar Power World.
“Swinerton Renewable Energy is known for its depth of understanding of the utility solar sector and its ability to respond to market demands by staying ahead of the curve in terms of technological innovation,” said Adrian P. De Luca, Locus Energy’s VP of Sales and Marketing. “In light of Swinerton’s position at the forefront of the industry, we consider it a testament to the value of our monitoring and data analytics products that they have been chosen by Swinerton as the standard for their entire fleet.”
By leveraging Locus Energy’s web-based SolarNOC software as part of the SOLV solution, Swinerton’s fleet operators will be able to more efficiently organize and assess performance data over a diverse set of solar PV assets spread across a wide geographical area, as well as streamline O&M workflows. In addition, Locus Energy has expanded its data acquisition and presentation capabilities, enabling Swinerton to integrate data from its industry-leading SCADA system.
Swinerton Renewable Energy will also integrate Locus Energy’s PVIQ analytics suite, a set of advanced data analytics services that allows PV system managers to analyze system and fleet level performance and quickly identify any causes of underperformance.
“Locus is uniquely positioned to provide the most advanced monitoring and analytics solutions across all segments of the PV market, at scale,” said Angelo Purpuras, Manager of Technical Services at Swinerton. “The use of the SolarNOC to manage our fleet provides our technicians with unprecedented data visibility, and the PVIQ analytics will help us to continue providing premium O&M services to our customers.”
Locus Energy’s PVIQ analytics suite delivers PV performance insight derived from the vast amounts of data produced by its approximately 50,000 solar monitoring systems throughout North America. PVIQ consists of three elements: Virtual Irradiance (VI); the Waterfall performance report; and a spreadsheet program plug-in. VI uses satellite and weather data to provide highly accurate ground-level irradiance data in 15-minute increments with coverage across the contiguous U.S. The Waterfall performance report assesses the drivers behind underperformance, including factors such as inverter malfunction, shading and soiling. The plug-in allows operators to access the Locus database directly from an Excel spreadsheet, which dramatically reduces the time required to prepare periodic performance reports.