Solution
The task of the team was to develop a monitoring portal – a web application, a mobile iOS & Android apps – that provides, with rich graphics, real-time data on the performance of large-scale solar plants and allows users to control the PV inverters remotely.
Data insights on the performance of solar inverters are available in clear and understandable charts and periodical reports, and errors are displayed as notifications.
Solar inverters convert the DC power provided by solar panels to AC power, which can be fed into the power grid. Through a network of sensors, the PV inverters can log their performance parameters and send them over the Internet to a central database.
With data being transmitted continuously (the progress of the connected devices can be sent every 1, 5, or 10 minutes), the maintenance crew can swiftly react to any changes or errors, reducing operational and maintenance costs and the downtime of solar panels to a minimum. The platform gives them remote control over the solar inverters. They have the possibility to restart, upgrade the firmware, or configure multiple internal parameters.
One innovative part of the software is an algorithm that analyzes the performance of every device (solar panel) and by factoring in the performance of other nearby devices can automatically spot the difference between false alarms (output dropping because of passing clouds) and real errors (output drops because of faulty modules or inverters).
Critical features for real-time maintenance of the solar system:
- Charts: They show minute-resolution data for tens of parameters in a line graph format, such as day, month, year, and total. Users can visualize data in a table format, too
- Periodical reports: Users can choose to receive daily, monthly, and yearly reports about the performance of their connected solar plants.
- Error notifications: Warnings and errors can be viewed in grids that can be sorted and filtered. When severe errors occur, users receive an e-mail.
Industrial IoT systems facilitate predictive maintenance by monitoring asset conditions, such as solar panels. In this case, long downtimes in energy production can be prevented by allowing the user to visualize real-time data insights even on mobile devices. Even more so, the API will enable users to download the data from their devices.
Collaboration
Our client, a multinational company, provides power solutions for industrial manufacturing. Our team works on a suite of projects that facilitate the maintenance of solar plants that rely on PV inverters:
- Load balanced services that collect the data;
- Local services that maintain the database, send e-mails, and generally operate on data;
- A web application that allows users to visualize real-time data insights;
- An API that allows users to download data to third-party devices;
- APIs serving other components of the solution, like Android and iOS apps.
During the long-term collaboration, the project transitioned from Waterfall to Agile, enabling dynamic change request management. Furthermore, a tailored process that ensures a rapid response from both sides was implemented.
One of the biggest challenges of the implementation lies in the application’s capacity to receive and manage large packages from the connected inverters and other devices and the ability to make it available for the user, because the number of connected devices is significant.
The project was expanded with services that allow the users to request support (repairs, service, etc.) for their inverters online, directly from the user interface.
Our team handles specification analysis, the UI/UX, documentation of implemented features, source code maintenance and deployment, and data center communication for maintenance operations for the overall project.
