Work Packages

The activities of the research project are divided in six work-packages (WPs).

WP1: Project management

This WP will provide the partnership a clearly consensual objective and define a shared working method, concepts and operational tools for project management and internal communication. UCY will coordinate and manage the project activities and the communication with the EU authorities. Finally, UCY will assure the effective collaboration among partners by establishing communication rules and decision making procedures, as well as providing a communication medium between the project partners, EC and national funding entities. A consortium agreement will also be established.

WP2: Dissemination and Exploitation

This work package is concerned with ensuring that the work carried out in the course of this project benefits a wide range of entities outside those involved directly in the work. In doing so, it is intended that maximum benefit of the work can be achieved. It will ensure that the work is published in appropriate scientific and industrial conferences informing and motivating others in the field. It will also enhance the transfer of knowledge between the consortium members as results will be disseminated through it, giving new insight. The partners of this consortium are keen to set up joint ventures to exploit the research outcomes and the Intellectual Property (IP) generated. A business plan will also be prepared describing the substantially improved product/service.

WP3: Data management and quality algorithms

The state-of-the-art infrastructures and technical knowledge on PV at the UCY and UJA and availability of real performance data from Alectris will serve as the basis for this WP. It is well known that PV power plants are covered by KPI guarantees between the O&M Contractor and Asset Owner. Such guarantees are based on operational and meteorological measurements that are collected in the field where interruptions causing missing or erroneous data may occur for long time periods. Such interruptions or other data loss causes or data aggregations can influence the estimation of the different KPIs. Therefore, in this WP, different aggregations and algorithms for treating missing and erroneous data will be developed in order to reduce uncertainties and biases in the estimation of different KPIs such as the performance ratio, yields, uptime, availability, etc. Through these algorithms, it is expected to achieve data availabilities > 95%.

WP4: Predictive and preventive maintenance

Although imaging and visual inspection techniques can identify almost all known PV failures (for corrective maintenance), the process is relatively time consuming, costly and requires additional (usually expensive) equipment. The scope of this WP is the development and verification of failure diagnosis and prognosis algorithms that will enable online predictive, preventive and corrective maintenance strategies. The algorithms will be based on previous work performed by the UCY and will be able to identify and quantify abnormal system performance losses caused by a number of failures. Degradation forecasting and parameter extraction techniques will be developed to detect trends that would trigger underperformance. Real-time comparisons will be performed against known failure profiles and performance effects in order to identify the loss and classify the type of failure. Such methods can offer the advantages of real-time detection, optimum O&M practices and time savings.

WP5: Soiling monitoring and mitigation

Dust deposition on the surface of PV modules (i.e. soiling) causes significant losses in PV systems, with power drops up to 70% in some regions. This means that it can lead to major financial losses due to the lower energy yield of PV systems, and the higher O&M costs and uncertainty on the PV performance. Therefore, monitoring and accurately quantifying soiling is essential to establish an optimum cleaning schedule, i.e. cleaning only when the associated expenses are lower than the revenues obtained through the projected energy gains. The aim of the WP is to develop online routines to accurately quantify the soiling loss of PV systems. The algorithms, developed and validated under real operating conditions, will identify the optimum cleaning schedule for any PV plant to maximize its performance and limit O&M costs. Based on the results of an industrial survey, the algorithms will also estimate the most convenient cleaning method or recommend the use of of anti-soiling coatings.

WP6: Integration of algorithms

The scope of the WP is to integrate all the developed algorithms, routines and models of WP3 to WP5 into a product that will be commercialised by Alectris. Initially, a beta version will be developed and benchmarked. The end-product will enable PV asset management through a cloud based platform that is already operational by Alectris. It is user-friendly with 40 predefined reports accurately depicting the condition of the plant and it allows the real-time monitoring of the PV plant generation, revenue, etc. The new algorithms will enhance the product in order to monitor the PV asset's health-state and enable optimum O&M including predictive and preventive maintenance. The product will give the ability to customers to monitor, operate, maintain and manage their solar portfolio allowing predictive, preventive and corrective maintenance resulting to lowering the LCOE (by up to 6.5%) by reducing the O&M costs (by up to 10%) and maximising the energy yield (by up to 4%).