Publications

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With rising grid interconnections of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, greater attention is being trained on lifecycle performance, reliability, and project economics. Expected to meet production thresholds over a 20-30 year timeframe, PV plants require a steady diet of operations and maintenance (O&M) oversight to meet contractual terms. However, industry best practices are only just beginning to emerge, and O&M budgets—given the arrangement of the solar project value chain—appear to vary widely. Based on insights from in-depth interviews and survey research, this paper presents an overview of the utility-scale PV O&M budgeting process along with guiding rationales, before detailing perspectives on current plant upkeep activities and price points largely in the U.S. It concludes by pondering potential opportunities for improving upon existing O&M budgeting approaches in ways that can benefit the industry at-large.

With rising grid interconnections of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, greater attention is being trained on lifecycle performance, reliability, and project economics. Expected to meet production thresholds over a 20-30 year timeframe, PV plants require a steady diet of operations and maintenance (O&M) oversight to meet contractual terms. However, industry best practices are only just beginning to emerge, and O&M budgets—given the arrangement of the solar project value chain—appear to vary widely. Based on insights from in-depth interviews and survey research, this paper presents an overview of the utility-scale PV O&M budgeting process along with guiding rationales, before detailing perspectives on current plant upkeep activities and price points largely in the U.S. It concludes by pondering potential opportunities for improving upon existing O&M budgeting approaches in ways that can benefi t the industry at-large.

This document outlines the foundation for developing language that can be utilized in an Equipment Availability Guarantee, typically included in an O&M services agreement between a PV system or plant owner and an O&M services provider, or operator. Many of the current PV O&M service agreement Availability Guarantees are based on contracts used for traditional power generation, which create challenges for owners and operators due to the variable nature of grid-tied photovoltaic generating technologies. This report documents language used in early PV availability guarantees and presents best practices and equations that can be used to more openly communicate how the reliability of the PV system and plant equipment can be expressed in an availability guarantee. This work will improve the bankability of PV systems by providing greater transparency into the equipment reliability state to all parties involved in an O&M services contract.

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Characterizing the factors that affect reliability of a photovoltaic (PV) power plant is an important aspect of optimal asset management. This document describes the many factors that affect operation and maintenance (O&M) of a PV plant, identifies the data necessary to quantify those factors, and describes how data might be used by O&M service providers and others in the PV industry. This document lays out data needs from perspectives of reliability, availability, and key performance indicators and is intended to be a precursor for standardizing terminology and data reporting, which will improve data sharing, analysis, and ultimately PV plant performance.

To fill a major knowledge gap, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) are jointly engaged in a multi-year research effort, supported by the Department of Energy’s SunShot Program, to examine real-world photovoltaic (PV) plant reliability and performance. Findings and analyses, derived from field data documented in the PV Reliability Operations Maintenance (PVROM) database tool as well as from convened workshops and working group discussions, are intended to inform industry best practices around the optimal operations and maintenance (O&M) of solar PV assets. To improve upon and evolve existing solar PV O&M approaches, this report: 1. Provides perspective on the concept of PV “system” reliability and how it can inform plant design, operations, and maintenance decisions that produce better long-term outcomes; 2. Describes the PVROM data collection tool, its technical capabilities, and results generated from database content in 2014; 3. Presents ongoing research efforts that are meant to drive the solar industry toward PV O&M best practice protocols and standards; and 4. Reflects on future areas of inquiry that can help better forecast plant health (e.g., system component availability, component wear out, etc.) and associated lifecycle costs. Ultimately, this report adds to the knowledge base of improving PV system O&M activities by discussing data collection and analysis techniques that can be used to better understand and enhance the reliability, availability, and performance of a photovoltaic system.

As greater numbers of photovoltaic (PV) systems are being installed, operations & maintenance (O&M) activities will need to be performed to ensure the PV system is operating as designed over its useful lifetime. To mitigate risks to PV system availability and performance, standardized procedures for O&M activities are needed to ensure high reliability and long-term system bankability. Efforts are just getting underway to address the need for standard O&M procedures as PV gains a larger share of U.S. generation capacity. Due to the existing landscape of how and where PV is installed, including distributed generation from small and medium PV systems, as well as large, centralized utility-scale PV, O&M activities will require different levels of expertise and reporting, making standards even more important. This report summarizes recent efforts made by solar industry stakeholders to identify the existing standards and best practices applied to solar PV O&M activities, and determine the gaps that have yet to be, or are currently being addressed by industry.

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Sandia National Laboratories, working with Energy Sense Finance developed the proof-ofconcept PV Valueª tool in 2011 to provide real estate appraisers a tool that can be used to develop the market value and fair market value of a solar photovoltaic system. PV Valueª moved from a proof-of-concept spreadsheet to a commercial web-based tool developed and operated exclusively by Energy Sense Finance in June 2014. This paper presents the results of a survey aimed at different user categories in order to measure how the tool is being used in the marketplace as well as elicit information that can be used to improve the tools effectiveness.

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Despite economic, political, legal, and technical challenges, carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) holds promise as a means to substantially reduce anthropogenic atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide. One of the technical challenges to CCS is an accurate quantification of the potential geologic storage resource. This analysis uses the publically available national-scale, systems-level Water Energy and Carbon Sequestration simulation model (WECSsim), to show that, depending on assumed boundary conditions, the majority of storage associated with large-scale CCS in the U.S. (on the order of 90-100GT of total reduced emissions) would occur at a small number of well-located sites with favorable geologic properties. WECSsim, through the use of marginal abatement cost curves, shows that under such a scenario, added costs associated with resident saline water extraction, transport, and treatment (SWETT) are justified by resulting increases in carbon dioxide storage efficiency in the geologic formation. This argument is strengthened when geologic uncertainty is taken into consideration. Like an insurance policy, the enhanced carbon dioxide storage efficiency that comes from SWETT adds well-defined costs to reduce potential economic risks associated with overestimates of the available geologic storage resource. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.