How to enhance the digitalization and management of a solar PV portfolio
Created in 2008, Albioma Solaire France develops, builds and operates a photovoltaic portfolio of rooftop and ground-mounted power plants in mainland France. Together with the SynaptiQ team, the independent renewable energy producer outlined a roadmap for optimizing the operations, performance analysis & reporting of their renewable energy portfolio. Zoom in on the work accomplished.
Albioma Solaire France has been working with the monitoring platform SynaptiQ for more than 8 years. But as they were growing, they realized that they were not using it to its full potential and that they could benefit from using more advanced features. To walk the talk, Albioma and 3E teams designed a step-by-step approach led by Romain Willaime, SynaptiQ Sales Manager in France & Southern Europe, and the whole SynaptiQ Operations team.
Step 1: Understanding the full potential of SynaptiQ
Like for many other change-management projects, the first step was to identify the starting point. We at 3E wanted the client to fully understand how to make the most of our asset management platform. So we started by giving a refresher training about the different functionalities of the platform to the growing Albioma team. In the meantime, we discussed what digitalised processes were already in place in the client’s day-to-day operations and to what extent the SynaptiQ platform already interacted with them.
Step 2: Defining one’s needs
After this first inventory phase, a thorough mapping exercise followed: defining the client’s needs, unscrambling their internal processes from the reception of the data into SynaptiQ to the sending of checklists to technicians, ...and figuring out how to improve all this in the simplest, quickest and least intrusive way.
Romain Willaime explains: “Understanding the way processes work in a sophisticated organization like Albioma is a challenging but crucial step. It enabled us to fine-tune their use of SynaptiQ to their needs and to support them during the early steps of the change-management process.”
Luc Koefman, Operations Manager from Albioma, adds: “We had become used to using only certain features of SynaptiQ. It was with the arrival of our new team-members, and Romain Willaime’s proposals, that we realised that we could do much, much more with SynaptiQ, to optimise the operation of our PV plants.”
Step 3: Customizing SynaptiQ’s built-in features
With the needs and the processes clearly identified, the actual implementation work could begin. SynaptiQ’s customer success team is composed of data engineers, technical account managers and service support managers. Together with Albioma, they worked on the implementation of the most tangible points of the project.
Advanced alarm management
First, the SynaptiQ support team configured customizable alarms with smart triggers. These near-real-time alarms enable efficient portfolio-wide O&M dispatching. When properly set up, the system is able to prioritize tasks in an automatic way and to isolate communication problems to avoid unnecessary interventions. Thanks to a smart alarm aggregation, SynaptiQ also prevents the alarm overview from being populated by similar or related alarms. For example, if a grid failure occurs and all the inverters are down, all the ‘inverter not producing’ alarms will be masked by a ‘plant not producing’ alarm with higher priority. Additionally, intelligent performance alarms measuring deviation from the actual performance of other inverters and strings, from the business plan, from the expected performance resulting from the digital twin model, etc. are also available.
Near real-time control room views
Second, the SynaptiQ support team defined a set of custom views and dashboards. This enables the client to have a comprehensive overview of the most important KPI’s. In this way, the analysis toolset makes in-depth analysis and component benchmarking quick and simple.
Say goodbye to Excel and hello to our automated intervention tasks management system
Third, our team helped the client upload customizable preventive and corrective maintenance tasks into SynaptiQ. With this built-in feature, the intervention tasks linked to assignment, planning, execution and completion are all centralized on the platform. The right checklist is sent to the technician according to alarm type, plant type, task type, etc. And the forms can be filled in through the portal or SynaptiQ Mobile app. In short, the whole workflow is automated, which enables the client to save a lot of time.
Automated and flexible reporting
Last but not least, 3E’s data engineers are working on the integration and generation of custom automated reporting. These FlexiReports will help our client to have in-depth insights on the performance of their plants and to stay in line with their business plan.
An O&M management system beyond monitoring
By better understanding how SynaptiQ could help them optimise their whole portfolio management, Albioma Solaire France was able to upgrade their digital processes. It results in an improvement of their operations and maintenance processes, and in a maximization of the value of their portfolio and resources.
Essam Saidi, O&M officer at Albioma Solaire France confirms: "We would like to thank the SynaptiQ team, in particular Romain Willaime, for their support in digitalising our maintenance management, and in automating the analysis of our data in order to optimise the production of our photovoltaic installations. This saves us a lot of time and optimises the management of our plants.”
Do you want to know more about 3E asset operations platform? Do you need some support in the digitalisation of your O&M workflow? Check out our dedicated webpage and book a meeting with one of our experts now!
