Solar PV O&M Standards and Best Practices – Existing Gaps and Improvement Efforts

Technical Report · Sat Nov 01 04:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1324303· OSTI ID:1324303

Klise, Geoffrey Taylor ^[1]; Balfour, John R. ^[2]; Keating, T. J. ^[3]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
2. High Performance PV, Phoenix, AZ (United States)
3. SunSpec Alliance, San Jose, CA (United States)

As greater numbers of photovoltaic (PV) systems are being installed, operations & maintenance (O&M) activities will need to be performed to ensure the PV system is operating as designed over its useful lifetime. To mitigate risks to PV system availability and performance, standardized procedures for O&M activities are needed to ensure high reliability and long-term system bankability. Efforts are just getting underway to address the need for standard O&M procedures as PV gains a larger share of U.S. generation capacity. Due to the existing landscape of how and where PV is installed, including distributed generation from small and medium PV systems, as well as large, centralized utility-scale PV, O&M activities will require different levels of expertise and reporting, making standards even more important. This report summarizes recent efforts made by solar industry stakeholders to identify the existing standards and best practices applied to solar PV O&M activities, and determine the gaps that have yet to be, or are currently being addressed by industry.

• Research Organization: Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)
• Contributing Organization: High Performance PV, Phoenix, AZ (United States); SunSpec Alliance, San Jose, CA (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1324303
• Report Number(s): SAND2014--19432; 540789
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY