PRESENTATION
2014 - Industry Session - Power Generation
Trends in Solar Performance Monitoring
This presentation will address performance monitoring trends in the rapidly growing solar power industry. As the industry matures from small rooftop applications to large utility-scale central power stations, requirements around plant monitoring and performance optimization have also grown. Content will include a state of the industry overview followed by a discussion of why the PI System is needed and how it is being used to meet the scale and velocity of project additions in North America and throughout the world. The presentation will conclude with case studies using PI System-based monitoring to perform automated fault detection of commercial and utility-scale PV power systems. In addition, the unique challenges of providing a multi-tenant application suite (multi-customer/multi-user) will be addressed and how to think about a scalable and secure architecture to meet this complex requirement.
Company
Power Factors LLC
Speaker
Steve Hanawalt
Steve Hanawalt has worked in the energy industry since the early 1980's. He joined SunPower Corporation as Global VP of O&M in 2007 where he had responsibility for commissioning and managing the largest fleet of solar photovoltaic power plants in the world (>1GW). Recognizing the solar industry was in need of an independent O&M provider with best in class monitoring and performance analytics, Hanawalt left SunPower in January, 2012 to form Power Factors LLC. He is considered an expert in development and implementation of real-time central monitoring and diagnostic centers and has spoken at industry conferences around the world on the topic. Hanawalt received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1982 with a specialization in energy conversion.