PRESENTATION
2013 - Users Conference - San Francisco
Leveraging the Power of PI as a Third Party NOC Platform
Photovoltaic power (PV) development has been the fastest growing sustainable business in the world over the last several years. In January of 2013, worldwide installed capacity for PV exceeded 100 GW. As this new asset class is integrated into the power grid, owners are increasingly turning to third party service providers to operate, maintain and optimize the performance of these assets. Unlike traditional fossil power assets, labor comprises the largest component of production costs for a PV power asset. To make PV competitive with other generation technologies, owners and service providers are increasingly looking for means of driving labor costs out of the equation for PV O&M. Power Factors, a leading third party solar service provider, is challenging old O&M paradigms by looking to technology to drive labor and operating efficiencies to previously unheard levels of performance. The foundation for this technology-driven paradigm shift is OSIsoft’s real-time performance management platform, PI. PI, and its ability to consume vast quantities of data in an event-driven architecture, presents the ideal environment for offering solar network operations center (NOC) functions as a service. Power Factors is currently implementing a third party NOC based on the PI platform and toolset. In this presentation, we will communicate the value proposition for a third party NOC, the IT architecture and service delivery model being deployed.
Company
Power Factors, LLC
Speaker
Steven Hanawalt
Steven Hanawalt has worked in the independent power industry since its birth in the early 1980's. Over the past thirty years, he has developed a deep set of operational and management skills including start-up engineering, performance engineering, operations management, and asset optimization.
Steve started his career as an engineer with International Power Technology. Recognizing that personal computing technology allowed engineers for the first time to automatically acquire and process real-time plant data, he founded Power Factors Incorporated in 1986 to provide plant performance analytic services to the power industry. Steve successfully ran Power Factors as CEO for 12 years before being recruited by Calpine in 1999 to develop its Plant Optimization business unit. Steve developed and led the group for seven years. His team was responsible for optimizing the thermal and economic performance of Calpine’s 25,000 MW portfolio of combined cycle power plants.
In 2007, Steve left Calpine to join SunPower Corporation as Global Vice President of O&M where he had responsibility for commissioning and managing the largest fleet of solar photovoltaic power plants in the world (>1GW). Recognizing that the solar industry needed an independent O&M provider with best in class monitoring and performance analytics, Steve left SunPower in January, 2012 to form Power Factors LLC. Steve is considered an expert in the development and implementation of real-time central monitoring and diagnostic centers and has spoken at many industry conferences around the world.
Steve received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982 with a specialization in energy conversion.