Why hire a specialized consultancy for PV projects?

Financial losses, loss of credibility on the market and accidents caused by faults which often may go unnoticed at the time of installation of a photovoltaic plant.  

These are just some of the main pains that many investors, integrators and other companies who work in the solar sector have already felt in their skin because they did not hire a specialized service consultancy to validate your projects. 

Such exclusive services have become increasingly common in the national market, due to the growth of the source and the great competitiveness that exists nowadays. 

Concerned about delivering a quality service that meets the needs of their customers, many businesspeople are looking to increase their credibility, your number of referrals and your earnings with future businesses investing, precisely, in consultancy services. 

This is because such companies, as they are based on a specialized technical staff, end up exercising a very important role to validate projects and perform specialized consultancy services that will ensure the proper functioning of a solar plant It is guarantee the satisfaction and revenue of the contracting company’s customers. 

Such services offered by consultancies range from validating whether the entire project was developed in accordance with regulatory standards and good engineering practices even discovering and correcting problems in plants that were put into operation. 

One of the companies that provides this type of service on the market is CS Consultoria, from the Canal Solar Group. A The company has more than 25 clients in its portfolio for the most diverse types of service, such as:

• Owner's Engineering;
• Root Cause Analysis of Failures;
• Project Analysis and Certification;
• PR Analysis and Validation;
• Commissioning of Category I (Cold) and Category II (Hot);
• Technical Expertise;
• R&D projects with Universities;
• Electroluminescence Test;
• Periodic verification of Generation Assets;
• Valuation and Due Diligence of PV Plants.

Geraldo Silveira, technical responsible engineer and Engineering manager at CS Consulting, explains that the company was created in response to the market’s own needs for some services that required specialized assistance. 

“Few people know, but Canal Solar started as a technical consultancy company, but at the time, there were few projects, mostly R&D, in fact. Given this, the way the company found to achieve its purpose in the market was to act as a news channel and courses for those who wanted to delve deeper into the solar energy sector”, said the professional.

“So, as we were already exploring these issues in our training, we decided to take advantage of our expertise to address market gaps, offering a specialized service that would bring more reliability to our clients’ assets,” he highlighted.

Altogether, the CS Consultoria was responsible for more than 2.16 GW in services provided for medium and large photovoltaic plants, spread across more than 20 Brazilian states, in all regions of the country.

Of these, more than 780 MW provided in commissioning services. According to Silveira, One of the services with the highest customer demands is commissioning tests and in this, several problems are found in daily routines. 

Between the most common problems ever encountered by the company in commissioning of solar plants are questions such as: 

• High vegetation, causing hot spots in photovoltaic modules in operation and damaging generation;
• Dirt in the modules, also causing hot spots and damaging generation;
• Unsealed electrical ducts and frames, facilitating the entry of insects and venomous animals that can generate short circuits;
• Operational defects in trackers;
• Loose connections that cause hot spots and in several cases fires related to problems with these connections have been identified; 
• Installation of inverters deviating from manufacturers' recommendations, impacting their efficiency and operational safety;
• Diversity of MC4 types, which changes the tools that disconnect them (lack of standardization) and causes problems with connections;
• Use of clamps and structural parts that do not comply with the recommendations of photovoltaic module manufacturers;
• Lack of an effective and correctly designed grounding system;

According to Silveira, Many of these problems are easily detected with a consultancy specialized. 

“Often the plant is even safe for operation, but some generation losses are not being identified because these are, for example, plants with up to hundreds of MW. However, over a year it could represent a significant loss in revenue”, he explained. 

“How many strings does a 5, 10 or even 200 MW solar plant have? There are many! So, because of some losses that the company does not identify at the outset, the plant's performance drops, which could represent a significant loss in accumulated revenue”, he highlighted. 

According to Silveira, the The price you pay for a consultancy service is ridiculous compared to the value of the investment in the project and the risk of having an unsafe operation of the plant, which can result in major losses if an important link in the system is burned or damaged. 

Also the Generation losses can be significant if there is not an adequate proprietary engineering service and correct commissioning of the photovoltaic plant, whether distributed or centralized generation.  

“The plant must have a rigorous monitoring process from the planning and design stage, with adequate proprietary engineering, adequate commissioning and, finally, efficient O&M work”, he commented.

“Constant monitoring of the photovoltaic system is very important for safe operation and also for meeting the project’s generation expectations”, concluded Silveira. 

A CS Consultoria e Serviços offers specialized services for integrators, investors and other companies who work with renewable energy projects, more details of their services can be found clicking here. 

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