Introduction to solar storage 
The creation of solar/storage asset management was on full blast this year. Addressing topics ranging from pattern matching and machine learning/AI, risk mitigation, repowering of older solar fleets, transition management, production insurance, aerial analysis, mergers and acquisitions trends, fintech, residential O&M, warranties, cybersecurity, and energy storage/solar plus storage were discussed. With significant success comes large growing pains in the solar industry. 
 

Challenges of an aging solar fleet
 
Michael Alvarez of Longroad Energy discussed the challenges of an aging solar fleet. He cited that astonishing statistic that some 76% of U.S. solar installations are 10 years old or less. There’s an increasing number of plants coming off warranty over the next years. He says considerations for aging assets, such as end of warranty, supply chain and parts sourcing, O&M services continuity, expiring PPAs, and repowering. For example, when it comes to the supply chain, its exceedingly difficult with many suppliers having gone out of business. This impacts the energy generation and profitability of an older plant. Minimizing priority to identify alternative sources of modules, inverters, and BOS components and looker closer at what you need to set aside for component reserves ahead of time. He cautioned that “the reactive approach to supply chain is the largest single value killer in aging solar projects.” But Martinez says there’s a lot of value in these older PV installations and that “storage will be the key to extending the lifetime of solar assets.”
 

Standardizing solar storage management discussions

The more memorable topics of storage, solar-plus-storage, and asset management practices, use cases and the like found its way into several sessions. The keynote panel decreased the solar uncertainty in the aftermath of the U.S. Federal Tax reform and the Section 201 trade case into an additional morass of uncertainty when it comes to storage. But the solar operational management aspects of storage are extremely challenging. Some sessions focused on how to integrate and manage storage to improve operations, create useable storage maintenance guidelines, harness storage’s own big data stream, and learn from early storage deployment stories. Performance standards for storage systems, note that charge and discharge were essential battery monitoring metrics, and writing a warranty without knowing how the battery will be used (load shifting, frequency regulation, demand charge management, auxiliary utility services and more is hard). 
 
In the near future, hopefully a more mainstream standardize way to organizing all aspects of solar/storage asset management. If you want to move into the future and join the solar revolution, or if you want to find out what solar panels are right for you, go to HahaSmart.com and try our price checker tool. You can see how much a system will cost, and how much you can save over the next 20 years. For more information relating to going solar, don't forget to visit our solar blog section for more handy guides and articles.