Verification of the contractual availability of two German PV portfolios

October 2018

Everoze was delighted to verify the contractual availability of the PV projects from two German investors. One project consists of a portfolio of two farms with 60MWp combined, which was installed in 2011 in Northern Germany. The installed capacity of the second project amounts to 30 MWp, operational since 2014.

One client requested Everoze to independently perform an availability analysis as part of a wider performance review of the O&M contractor. Everoze employed advanced data analysis for several hundreds of inverters on the basis of 1-minute SCADA data derived from the monitoring system of the plant, including data at the inverter and string levels.

These data sets were compared against each other as well as to the metered production data. In addition potential production estimates were calculated based on satellite derived irradiance data, in order to allow for the detection of string AND inverter technical unavailability during times of SCADA data loss. Although the reported technical availability as per the O&M reports exceeded the guaranteed availability level for the plant, the Everoze analysis showed that the actual availability had been below the availability stated in the O&M reports. In addition, Everoze detected low data availability of only 80% at string level due to failures of the monitoring system, also not stated in the O&M reports.

Everoze performed a similar analysis for the second client. In this case again 1-minute data was received together with a set of thermal inspection reports.

As part of this industry-leading approach, Everoze produced technical reports highlighting the unavailability, which can be used by the Client for internal management decisions or external legal procedures.

Everoze’s work was led by partners Stefan Mau and Francesca Costigan supported by a broader project team, including Thiebault Mura and Christophe Campistron.