"Solar O&M in India - Scaling up to support the targeted growth" presentation by DV Satya Kumar, MD, Shri Shakti Alternative Energy Ltd, official Partner of Alectris, Greece, which developed ACTIS, the world's first Solar ERP Software.

1. Session : Operation & Maintenance – A Burgeoning Business in India?
InterSolar India, Mumbai
20th October 2016
DV Satya Kumar
MD, Shri Shakti Alternative Energy Ltd
Solar O&M in India - Scaling up to
Support the Targeted Growth

2. First Solar Company to be incubated by IFC,
Washington under PVMTI Program, circa 2000
Grant award from PACEsetter Fund in
May 2016 for Remote Monitoring of Solar
Pumps and Off-grid Solar Plants
First to achieve financial
closure on full non recourse
basis for AES Solar India for
5MW project under JNNSM
migration scheme in Jan, 2010
Developed the First private
solar park in Rajasthan
under a MoU with State
Government. Tata Power
booked 50MW capacity.
Advised RERC for determination of tariff for the
earliest MW solar power projects in India, 2009-10
About Shri Shakti and some of our Firsts in Solar

3. Solar O&M Business Services include…
 3
Solar Performance Monitoring
For Utility Solar Power Projects with realtime analytics and
automated MIS reports, truly going far beyond SCADA systems…
Solar O&M with Guaranteed PR
Outsource your O&M to SolarPro and relax with our Performance
Ratio (PR), Availability and Response Time guarantees...
Diagnostics for Performance Improvement
Diagnostics for continuous performance improvement for better
ROI in both performing & under performing plants...

4. O&M contracts with performance guarantees for…
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Operating Plant Owners
We undertake O&M
contracts with performance
guarantees and follow best
practices from matured
markets.
EPC Contractors
We become your O&M sub
contractors and provide
guarantees on response
times, availability and
performance ratios.
New Project Developers
Our approach consists of
Design Evaluation,
Acceptance Testing, O&M
with Performance
guarantees.

5. 5
Rapid growth and capacity addition
Source: Bridge to India

6. Worldwide,
performance of PV
plants is not without it’s
share of issues. This is
mainly because:
 Plants were constructed
under extreme time
pressure
 Some EPC Contractors
had limited or no
experience in solar PV
 Some of the EPC
Contractors who
undertook the O&M of the
plants became financially
distressed and neglected
their O&M obligations
 Solar O&M has been very
often perceived as trivial
 Boom and bust in the
solar market
With five years of
MW solar plants in
operation,
experience in India
is no different
MNRE funded study
by IIT, Bombay, on
field performance
and degradation of
solar modules is a
wake up call India can learn from
global experience
and counter such
shortcomings with
better preparedness
Lessons to learn from rapid growth…

7. Weighing in Solar O&M
Operations & Maintenance (O&M) is no more an add-on to Engineering, Procurement
and Construction (EPC)
A critical component in the solar energy value chain, best outsourced to professional
O&M contractors
Solar O&M can draw parallels to building facilities management for operations, asset
management and warranty administration.
O&M costs (OPEX) over 25 years, in NPV terms, would be 15% of overall Plant
CAPEX
Solar O&M is the 2nd largest expenditure line-item, next only to ‘Debt servicing cost’ , making it
effectively the largest expense head that can actually be controlled month-on-month, to make
O&M a ‘Profit Center’

8. The MBA of Solar O&M
Best Practices

9. Monitoring means

10. Monitoring with the new KPIs of IEC 61724 Standard
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Developers typically use PR and AVA to evaluate the EPC / O&M contractor
performance
Very useful as long as the raw data of the calculations is precise and coherent
Banks and Investors are more concerned about Actual Vs Base case scenarios
Useful tool for evaluating the financial performance of an asset, it is less useful
for technically evaluating a Plant
Customize your KPIs
Temperature compensated PRSTC and Soiling Ratio (SR*)
PRannual-eq compensating for seasonal variation over one full year
* SR = ratio of PV array output power to the power if the array were clean

11. Best Practices Oriented Approach to O&M
 Performance issues are already surfacing alarmingly at some of the operating Indian
solar plants
 This demands an urgent focus on adoption of best practices and guidelines from
matured markets, especially in view of the huge growth targets
 Why reinvent the wheel?
 SolarPower Europe
 SunSpec Alliance
 Experience Sharing;
set up Indian benchmarks

12. Automation of Operations - Manpower cost ~50% of Solar O&M costs?
 In conventional thermal power plants, fuel costs are a major part of the O&M cost
and manpower costs are insignificant
 Whereas, in solar PV plants the fuel cost is NIL and manpower costs are a major
component of the O&M budget
 Supervision, manual monitoring and
performance analysis needs to be
automated to reduce the O&M
manpower cost
16%
32%
22%
0%
21%
9% 0%
BREAKUP OF O&M COST
SECURITY COST
SUPERVISION COST
MODULE CLEANING COST
BUSH CUTTING COST
SPARES & TOOLS COST
CONTINGENCY
MARGIN

13. Automation of Analytics and Operations Management

14. How good O&M can help – An SSAEL Study
 PV MODULES
 Detection of failures pertain to PID, Micro cracks and snail tracks detected
means such as visual inspection, Thermographic imaging and IV curve
analysis. Such failures have resulted in up to 20 to 30% lower yield
 Module mismatching results in 1 to 1.5% loss in Generation, Panel
Degradation up to 2% and Soiling losses up to 1.5 to 2% of generation
 INVERTER
 Dust accumulation on internal parts of the circuit breaker causes random
tripping; the cooling fan and motor get jammed creating overheating and
IGBT failures follow
 TRANSFORMER
 Overloading, fluctuation in grid voltage, heating and moisture condensation
in oil, bushing failures, cable Joint / termination failure, windings burn and oil
leakages kill efficiency
 SWITCHYARD
 Failures in insulator, LA, CT/PT and circuit breakers have caused plant shut
downs for 2 to 3 days

15. Questions to Ask to while scaling up rapidly
 Should Solar O&M be in-house or outsourced?
 How is it possible to treat Solar O&M treat as a ‘profit center’ rather than a ‘cost
center’?
 Does my top management bestow attention on O&M commensurate to 15% of
plant CAPEX?

16. Case Study 1 – 12 MW Plant, Jordan
 ACTIS (Solar ERP) has been installed on the plant and Alectris is providing O&M services
from COD
 The EPC constructor is a primary Nasdaq listed player
 Contractual management by an international team of Legal and Technical Advisors
 Lender: IFC (International Finance Corporation/World Bank Group)
 The structure EPC & O&M as two different players resulted in full bankability and eligibility for
project financing from a primary global lender
 Part of the contract involves a technology transfer by Alectris and 8 weeks of training, starting
from the fourth year, to allow the local company to operate & maintain the plant autonomously
Business Case: O&M for a 12MWp project
 16

17. Case Study 2 – 38% performance improvement, Foggia, Italy
 Inadequate engineering and improper construction and maintenance led to severe problems
during its operation.
 Alectris stepped into this portfolio of four distressed plants in June 2013 as O&M manager.
First, a full diagnosis of the plants was performed with implementation of immediate actions to
increase the plants’ availability.
 In parallel ACTIS was installed on all the plants. An average performance increase of over
20%, corresponding roughly to an average 60,000€ per plant per year of extra revenues
(gross) generated.
 The solar plants, with the new monitoring system and continuous improvements, increased the
performance ratio from the initial value of about 65% to 85+%.
Business Case: 4 plants - turnaround and optimization
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18. Typical Scope Matrix for O&M
Sr No Subdivision of Activity Owner EPC
Third
Party
O&M
Contractor
1. Plant Supervision
Performance Monitoring ü
Issue detection/diagnostic ü
Service dispatch/supervision ü
Security Monitoring interface ü
2. Plant Operation
Remote plant control ü
Power/Energy forecasting ü
Maintainance scheduling ü
Grid operator Intreface ü
3. Guarantees
Response time guarantee ü
Availability Guarantee ü
Performance Ratio (PR) guarantee ü
Production Guarantee ü
Design, construction and workmanship
guarantees ü
OEM Warrantees
Back to
Back with
OEMs ü
4. Performance Engineering
Trending & Performance analysis ü
Predictive maintenance dispatch ü
Optimized cleaning schedule ü
Operations
Management
A

19. Typical Scope Matrix with third party O&M
Sr No Subdivision of Activity Owner EPC
Third
Party
O&M
Contractor
1. PV Plant Maintainance
Preventive & Corrective ü
Electrical & Mechanical ü
PV Module,racks/trackers, wires
and conduits, combiners,
inverters, monitoring system ü
Transformer, Switch gear, ü
Spare Part storage Purchase Stores
2. PV Site Maintainance
Module cleaning (12 cycles/year) ü Supervision
Water for module cleaning ü
Vegetation abatement ü Supervision
Site security/survelliance ü
3. General Site Maintainance
Water/Waste management ü Supervision
Roads/fences/buildings/drain
maintainance ü
Supervision
Environment compliances ü ü
Maintainan
ce
B

20. Typical Scope Matrix for O&M
r No Subdivision of Activity Owner EPC
Third
Party
O&M
Contractor
1. Technical asset Management
Plant/asset performance supervision ü
Asset performance reporting ü
Over sight/Managment of O&M provider
and other contractor ü
Warranty administration ü ü
2. Financial/Commercial Management
Billing,Collection,Payment ü
Accounting & Financial reporting ü
Tax Preparation/billing/administration ü
Equity/debt financing management ü
Insuarnace Administration ü
Interface with
banks,investors,regulators,local
authorities etc ü
SPV/ project co representaion ü
3. Back office
Performance/service reporting ü
Spare Parts Management ü
Warranty claim Management ü
Asset
Managment
C

21. In Summary: To support the targeted solar growth in India…
Monitoring Robust data acquisition and real time analytics for performance
Monitoring are essentially the ‘eyes and ears’ of the solar plant
Best Practices Disciplined approach to O&M through adoption of best practices
guidelines and experience sharing
Automation Automation of processes and work flow to bring down cost of
manpower and operations management

22. Email satya@solarpro.co.in
Meet:
III Floor, Venkata Sai Ganapathi Gold,
Telecom Nagar, Gachibowli,
Hyderabad 500 032
Mobile + 91 98491 29629
Visit: http://www.solarpro.co.in
Call: +91-40-2300-5959, 96661-29629
Thank You
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Shri Shakti Alternative Energy Ltd – Your Alectris Partner in India