Lifecycle Quality Best Practice Guidelines
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02
Definitions
This section introduces a set of definitions for important terms that are widely used in the Lifecycle Quality field. It is extremely important that all stakeholders have a common understanding of these terms when working together as they will clarify expectations and responsibilities issuing from a contract. This chapter has been partly compiled from the definition sections in SolarPower Europe’s EPC, O&M and Asset Management Best Practice Guidelines, and additional definitions have come from the electrotechnical dictionary, Electropedia. It is designed to serve as a useful accompaniment to understanding the terms in SolarPower Europe’s suite of guidelines.
| Additional Services | Actions and/or works performed, managed, or overseen by an O&M service provider, which are not (but can be if agreed) part of the regular services and normally charged “as-you-go” (e.g., ground maintenance, module cleaning, security services etc.). Some of the additional services can be part of Preventive Maintenance, depending on the contractual agreement. |
| Advanced Data Analysis | The autonomous or semi-autonomous analysis of data, using specifically developed algorithms and techniques, which delve deeper than standard monitoring capabilities, and enable access to deeper insights. This can help make predictions more accurate and generate recommendations. |
| Asset management (AM) | The commercial and financial management of a solar investment and the supervision and control of technical activities. This involves management of a company or a portfolio operating across several sites, dealing with a variety of regulatory frameworks and business models. AM is also defined as the coordinated activities of an organisation to generate value from its assets (ISO 55000). |
| Asset management platform | A software package or suite of tools that is used by the Asset Manager to store and manage technical, and non-technical data and information collected from and relating to the solar asset, portfolio or Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). It combines the abilities of a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and an Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP). |
| Asset portfolio | A group of assets that are governed by the same regulations and obligations. A portfolio is typically established and assigned for managerial control purposes and is usually defined by country, monitoring service provider, Operation & Maintenance (O&M) service provider or another category. |
| Commissioning | System commissioning closes the construction phase of the solar power plant and begins the commercial operation period. Commissioning includes performance and reliability tests to make sure that the solar power plant is built according to international standards, best industry practice, and complies with the Owner’s requirements and grid specifications. |
| Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) | Software designed to measure and record various O&M Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as Acknowledgement Time, Intervention Time, Reaction Time, Resolution Time, and equipment performance, including Mean Time Between Failures, to optimise maintenance activities. |
| Contract management | Managing the rights and obligations of contracts to ensure they are fulfilled. For Asset Managers this involves building, developing, and maintaining business relationships with counterparties of different contracts. This includes selecting service providers, negotiating with banks, landowners, and operations providers, managing insurance and warranty claims, as well as ensuring compliance of the contractual obligations, such as notifying, filing, and reporting. For service providers this involves fulfilling their agreed contractual obligations. |
| Contractual framework | Managing the rights and obligations of contracts to ensure they are fulfilled. For Asset Managers this involves building, developing, and maintaining business relationships with counterparties of different contracts. This includes selecting service providers, negotiating with banks, landowners, and operations providers, managing insurance and warranty claims, as well as ensuring compliance of the contractual obligations, such as notifying, filing, and reporting. For service providers this involves fulfilling their agreed contractual obligations. |
| Control Room Services (also known as Operations Centre Services or Remote Operations Centre) | Comprehensive actions like PV plant monitoring, performance analysis, supervision, remote controls, management of maintenance activities, interaction with grid operators, regulators, Asset Managers and Asset Owners, and the preparation and provision of regular reporting, performed by experienced and qualified staff in a control room, during operational hours for 365 days/year. |
| Corrective maintenance | Measures (immediate or deferred) taken to correct failures, breakdowns, malfunctions, anomalies, or damages detected during inspections, or through monitoring, alarming, or reporting or any other source. These measures are designed to restore a PV system to regular operating status. |
| Data & monitoring requirements | Technical and functional specifications for both software and hardware systems used to collect, transmit and store production, performance, and environmental data for power plant management. |
| DC box | A DC box (or Generator Connection Box) is used in PV power plants to connect the individual solar module strands of a photovoltaic array in parallel, and to connect larger wire cross sections to the inverter. |
| Degradation | Decrease in the efficiency of a solar plant with the passage of time. Usually, at least 80% of the original output is expected within a 20-year period. Most financial assessments assume a 0.3-0.5% yearly ageing factor. |
| Development (project development) | Phase in the lifecycle of a project that includes its initiation, site selection, customer identification, preliminary studies, applications for permits, securing financing and selecting the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) service provider. Project developers may own the project in the early development stages or even longer. The term “Project development” sometimes includes elements of Engineering and Procurement. However, this is not the case in SolarPower Europe’s suite of guidelines. |
| Digital Twin | A digital incarnation of the entire solar plant which delivers both the geospatial and electrical context of individual components and allows the recording and display of data and files against these components. |
| Distribution station | A Distribution Station is the final stage in the delivery of electric power. Distribution substations connect to the transmission system and lower the transmission voltage to medium voltage ranging between 2 kV and 35 kV with the use of transformers. |
| Document management system (DMS) | A management system that records, manages, and stores documents required for O&M and AM. These include previous and current versions of technical plant and equipment documentation and drawings, maintenance manuals, photos, reports, reviews, and approvals. DMS also define proper document formats and the processes for information exchange. Due to the increasing complexity of documents and to enable advanced analytics, electronic DMS with the ability to handle meta-tags and searchable, editable documentation are becoming best practice. |
| Engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) | EPC refers to companies that deal with the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning of solar systems. The EPC service provider is responsible for delivering a complete Photovoltaic (PV) power plant to the Asset Owner, handling all aspects from seeking authorisation for the construction to commissioning and securing a grid connection. For more information, see SolarPower Europe’s EPC Best Practice Guidelines. |
| Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) | Business management software that allows a company (such as an O&M service provider or an Asset Manager) to gather, store, manage and analyse all types of data relevant to their operations. |
| Extraordinary Maintenance | Actions and/or works performed in case of major unpredictable faults, such as serial defects, force majeure events etc, that are generally considered outside of the ordinary course of business. |
| Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC) | An official acknowledgement that the minimum Performance Ratio (PR), guaranteed by the EPC service provider, has been met over a two-year period since the issuance of a Provisional Acceptance Certificate (PAC). The acknowledgement also confirms that the power plant has no defects. Once delivered, the Owner takes over full responsibility for the plant. |
| Feed-in tariff (FiT) | A policy mechanism, designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies, through which power producers enter into a long-term contract where they receive a fixed rate payment for each unit of energy they produce and inject into the electricity grid. |
| Good industry practice | A legal term, often used in contracts, good industry practice is synonymous with best practice throughout SolarPower Europe’s suite of guidelines. The term refers to practices, methods, techniques, standards, codes, specifications, acts, skills, and equipment that go beyond the established minimum acceptable baseline in the international solar power industry (including in the construction and installation of solar power facilities). They are adhered to by high-quality service providers and are designed to help accomplish the desired result of a decision or action (or lack thereof), in line with applicable laws and permits. Good industry practices are reliable and safe, economically efficient, protect the environment and are done with the degree of skill, diligence and prudence that would ordinarily be expected. |
| Grid code compliance requirements | Equipment, procedures, and actions required by a grid operator to comply with grid safety, power quality and operating specifications. |
| Health, Safety, Security & Environment (HSSE) | HSSE are the policies and guidelines in place to ensure occupational health, and safety at work, the security of a site and environmental protection. They are applicable to staff and visitors and are designed in accordance with European and national laws and regulations. |
| Insurance claim | An application to an insurer, from a customer, for reimbursement based on their insurance policy terms. |
| Inverter | An Inverter is a type of electrical converter which converts the variable direct current (DC) output of a photovoltaic power plant into a utility frequency alternating current (AC). Afterwards it feeds into a commercial electrical grid or is used by a local, off-grid electrical network. |
| Irradiation | The solar radiation incident on a solar panel over time, relative to its area. It is usually expressed in watt-hours per m². It plays an important role in the determination of the optimal inclination angle of PV modules and the profitability of a PV system. |
| Key performance indicators (KPIs) | SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) parameters used to evaluate relative performance against a set of fixed objectives. |
| Management of change | Management of change defines the way to handle necessary adjustments of the design of a PV power plant after the Commercial Operation Date (COD). Changes require a close cooperation between the Asset Owner and the O&M service provider. |
| Monitoring system | The digital platform used for the overall management of PV plants or a PV plant portfolio. It allows for centralised monitoring of the functioning, energy generation and reference data of a PV plant and its components. Ideally, this would be performed through a real-time monitoring module that retrieved data from local Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. It also includes operational modules such as ticket dispatching, analytics, and reporting. The centralised monitoring module receives data for 24 hours a day, all year from in-plant SCADA systems, purpose-built sensors for measuring irradiation and temperature and other sources such as meteorological information. |
| Operation & Maintenance (O&M) | O&M includes all the services that ensure maximum efficiency and the smooth running of a PV plant. The services include monitoring and supervision, predictive, preventive, and corrective maintenance, performance analysis and improvement, power generation forecasting, and site security management. |
| Performance analysis & improvement | Measurements, calculations, trends, comparisons, inspections, etc. performed to evaluate a PV plant, segments and/or single component performance, site conditions, equipment behaviour, etc., and to provide reports and assessment studies to interested parties (customer, public authority, etc). |
| Performance Ratio (PR) | PR is a quality indicator of the PV plant. As the ratio between the actual Specific Yield and the theoretically possible Reference Yield, PR captures the overall effect of losses of the PV system when converting from nameplate DC rating to AC output. Typically, losses result from factors such as module degradation, temperature, soiling, inverter losses, transformer losses, and system and network downtime. The higher the PR is, the more energy efficient the plant is. |
| Personnel & training | Operators, technicians, engineers, and managers employed for the execution of the O&M activities and training plans/programmes to train them on relevant PV plant related aspects and to keep them continuously updated on their respective roles. |
| Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) | Contract of electricity supply between a party generating and selling electricity, and a party purchasing electricity. The PPA defines the conditions of the agreement, such as the amount of electricity to be supplied, point of interconnection, applicable rate schedule, production guarantees and penalties for non-compliance. |
| Power plant controls | Actions required by the grid operator, for controlling active and/or reactive power being fed into the grid, other power quality factors that are subject to adjustments and/or (emergency) shut down (if applicable). |
| Power plant supervision | The supervision and analysis of data from a monitoring system, by experienced personnel. This takes place during daylight hours and managed by one or more control rooms (365 days/year). The reception and qualification of the alarms from the monitoring tool is also considered to be part of the supervision. |
| Power Generation Forecasting | Adoption of forecasting tools calculating expected power production for a certain timeframe from weather forecasts to supply the expected power production to Owner, grid operator, energy traders or others. This is normally country and plant dependent. |
| Predictive Maintenance | Actions and/or techniques that are performed to help assess the condition of a PV system and its components, predict/forecast and recommend when maintenance actions should be performed. The prediction is derived from the analysis and evaluation of significant parameters of the component (e.g., parameters related to degradation). Monitoring systems and expert knowledge are used to identify the appropriate actions, based on a cost benefit analysis. |
| Preventive Maintenance | Actions, testing or measurements to ensure optimal operating conditions of equipment and the entire PV plant, preventing defects and failures before they arise. Preventive maintenance takes place periodically, and according to a specific maintenance plan and schedule. |
| Provisional Acceptance Certificate (PAC) | A preliminary acknowledgement that the minimum Performance Ratio (PR), guaranteed by the EPC service provider, has been met after an initial testing period, following completion of the power plant’s construction. The issuance of the PAC launches the two-year warranty period, after which, provided the PR guaranteed by the EPC service provider has been met, a FAC is issued. |
| PV Power plant | An independent electricity generating entity (PV panels and Balance of System), with its own set of operational and financial contracts. |
| Quality | Quality is a perceptual, conditional, and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. It is a commitment to customers in the market. It can also be defined as fitness for intended use. Quality also takes into account the reduction of harm that a product may cause to the environment or human society. |
| Quality Management (QM) | Quality Management is the process through which an organisation ensures Quality. Its four pillars are Quality Control & Assurance, Quality Review, Quality Improvement and Quality Planning. |
| Reference yield | The Reference yield represents the energy obtainable under standard conditions, with no losses, over a certain period. |
| Regulatory & statutory compliance | Compliance with any law, statute, directive, bylaw, regulation, rule, order, delegated legislation, or subordinate legislation directly applicable in the country where a service is provided or an SPV and PV power plant are located. This also includes respecting any mandatory guidelines and measures issued by a utility or any other competent public authority. |
| Reporting & other deliverables | Obligations to provide updates, or deliver results and products, to the relevant stakeholders, issuing from a contract or as best practice. |
| Risk | The effect of uncertainty on objectives. The major categories of PV risk include, but are not limited to, financial risks, country and regulatory risks, contractual risks, commercial risks, technical risks, and reputational risk. |
| Risk Management | The practice of identifying and analysing the risks around solar power systems and operations and taking steps to mitigate them. The four areas of Risk Management in this document are Risk Analysis, HSSE, Due Diligence and Quality Management. |
| Security | Actions, procedures, equipment and/or techniques that are adopted on site and remotely to protect the plant from theft, vandalism, fire, and unauthorised entry. Security services are to be provided be specialised security service providers. |
| Spare parts management | Ensuring that the right amounts and types of components and equipment are available to carry out prompt maintenance and minimise the downtime of a PV plant. They can be stored in warehouses or in the O&M service provider’s stocks. |
| Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) | A company with its own rights, assets, and liabilities, created for building, owning, and operating one or more solar power plants. An SPV can also be referred to as an SPE (special purpose entity) or as a project company. |
| Specific yield | Specific yield is the measure of the total energy generated per kWp installed over a certain period of time. This measure is generally calculated at plant AC energy metered. In both cases it indicates the number of full equivalent hours a plant produced during a specific time frame. |
| Substation | Substations transform voltage from high to low or the reverse. A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. A substation may include transformers to change voltage levels between high transmission voltages and lower distribution voltages or at the interconnection of two different transmission voltages |
| Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) | A data acquisition system that connects various hardware and software components in a given site and is used to monitor and control the solar power plant remotely. SCADA systems are typically employed to send data to a centralised monitoring system for monitoring and analytical purposes (see definition for “Monitoring System”). |
| Transmission System Operator (TSO) | Entity responsible for controlling and operating the transmission grid, which usually comprises the voltage levels of 220 kV and 380 kV in Europe. The operations include monitoring and controlling the current grid topology (position of breakers and switches within the grid), as well as the voltage, in all parts of the transmission grid. Any planned PV plant outages need to be communicated to the TSO. |
| Turnkey EPC contract | A turnkey EPC contract is a contract in which the EPC contractor service provider delivers the entire solar power plant to the investor so that construction and commissioning are completed, and the solar power plant is ready, available to operate and feed the generated electricity to the grid distribution system. |
| Warranty management | Warranty management usually aggregates activities of a diverse nature which are linked to areas such as supply of equipment and services, and project construction. All these responsibilities (warranties) are usually materialised when a PAC is issued by the EPC service provider. Warranty Management is the activity that manages these warranties with the objective of reducing the costs and response times after warranty claims for repair or replacement of certain PV system components (under the warranty of the EPC service provider and/or the components manufacturer). |