Latest / Clean Power Hour / Your Solar Asset Is Underperforming. Here's Why. #335

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Your Solar Asset Is Underperforming. Here's Why. #335 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Dan Leary: We're trying to make solar more predictable and more reliable, and we do this through data. Right now we see a lot of people still doing solar and managing their data the same way they were 10 years ago, but there's been so much innovation that can help them. Where our primary product, we call it energy accounting, it's helping owners and operators and their providers to understand where losses are happening and help them understand what they can recover, what they can fix, and what they should potentially reconsider about their models, because it's all about making sure solar remains predictable and investors in these projects are seeing the returns that they expected.
• 1:35
  intro: Are you speeding the energy transition? Here at the Clean Power Hour, our host Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar, batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
• 1:45
  intro: We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition.
• 2:01
  Tim Montague: We're at Ari plus northeast in Boston, and we're with one of my favorite repeat guests, Dan Leary, the founder of Dena watts. If you're a longtime listener, you've seen him on the show, but real quick, Dan is he's got an amazing solar resume, okay, co founder of panel claw, co founder of next amp and now a little company called Denowatts. I've been watching you grow for the last five years, Dan and it it's a great success story. I know it's many trials and tribulations, and we're going to talk a little bit about that. But more than anything, I want to talk about how the industry is maturing, right? And you've got some great ideas about that. Give us a real quick snapshot, though, on Denowatts. What is what? What is the differentiator? Why did you create? Denowatts on, how is it different than the existing monitoring platforms out there?
• 2:58
  Dan Leary: Thank you, Tim, that was quite an introduction. We're trying to make solar more predictable and more reliable, and we do this through data.
• 3:05
  Dan Leary: Right now we see a lot of people still doing solar and managing their data the same way they were 10 years ago, but there's been so much innovation that can help them where our primary product, we call it, energy accounting. It's helping owners and operators and their providers to understand where losses are happening and help them understand what they can recover, what they can fix and what they should potentially reconsider about their models, because it's all about making sure solar remains predictable, and investors in these projects are seeing the returns that they expected. Yeah.
• 3:47
  Tim Montague: So I think of this as getting more out of your asset right, improving the long term value of your projects and but as I was saying in the pre, you know, in the pre interview, there is some rocket science here. It's hard to understand your technology. You are not a traditional das or monitoring platform, but you So, you you you're into energy accounting, and you're into understanding how the asset is performing and where it's underperforming and why it's underperforming. So it gives the it gives the asset owner some insights that they otherwise wouldn't have.
• 4:26
  Dan Leary: Yes, there's a lot of aspects to monitoring. There's SCADA and controls and just the telemetry that goes along with the complex projects, solar and storage projects out there. But one aspect of monitoring is purely benchmarking, and which we take a step further to call energy accounting. And it's a really, it's it is rocket science, unfortunately, but we we needed to make it really simple in you know, when we started this, weather stations were science experiments, and there was a lot of sensors, and, you know, great sensors people didn't always use, or know how to use properly, and, you know, didn't always maintain, and as a result, you didn't get the results you needed. So what we did is we went and we innovated.
• 5:13
  Dan Leary: The very first thing was, let's build a smarter weather station.
• 5:16
  Dan Leary: So we built this little sensor, wireless and self powered sensor, called the dino. And then we were able to very quickly get people more accurate benchmarking data. And then we went and built a way to ingest all the data from the from the inverters, the trackers, the meters, you know, any any devices that are contributing to the performance of the site. And we pull that in, and in our Pythonic environment, we analyze it in real time, and break down what you made, what you should have made, and where you're seeing losses. Are the losses from shade, or is it from snow?
• 5:47
  Dan Leary: Is. From inverters, derating, you know what? Where could it be? And then the final step to energy accounting is breaking into buckets that everybody can understand. Is it? Is it because of climate related issues? Is it because of the way it was modeled? Is it because of external factors beyond anyone's control, and that's just life, or is it because of things that are it's within the commercial boundary of what can be controlled is the things that the the owners and operators can fix and recover. So once, once we can break it into these buckets, then we're going to have a lot more understanding about what is going to make solar more reliable.
• 6:27
  Tim Montague: And we were talking about energy accounting and creating a standard, right?
• 6:30
  Tim Montague: You've been collaborating with Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I grew up. And you used an analogy. It's analogous to GAAP for finance, which general accounting practices, generally accepted accounting principles, generally accepted accounting principles. So tell us more about this standard that you are working on, and how is that going to, I guess, improve the picture for asset managers.
• 7:08
  Dan Leary: Yes, that because that's the ultimate objective of of what we do at Denowatts.
• 7:11
  Dan Leary: It's, it's, it looks like a cool technology. It looks like we're a monitoring company, but we're actually a modeling company. And the reason why we're doing all of this is to bring what the financial community figured out hundreds of years ago is they need generally accepted accounting principles. It's the gravity that holds the whole financial system together and helps companies be tradable and bankable and understandable how they're performing. But that doesn't exist in solar it doesn't exist yet. So we've been working with Sandia and building out in our software a common way to report against what these performance are like the four buckets I described earlier, in a way that anybody can report to and understand. So we think that's that's an important next step in the evolution of the standards.
• 8:03
  Tim Montague: And how long is it going to take before this is a thing that everyone will know about?
• 8:07
  Dan Leary: Well, we're using it now commercially. Is sort of the demonstration, and we're working with Sandia Labs to see if there's a way that we can pull other, larger IPPs and other software companies into into following this. So that's something we're working on over the next six months, with the intent of publishing a white paper.
• 8:30
  Tim Montague: When I think of asset performance, I think of three buckets, green, yellow, red. The asset is performing as expected. The asset is in a yellow zone. Something is wrong.
• 8:40
  Tim Montague: I'm not sure what the asset is down clearly something is wrong.
• 8:45
  Tim Montague: And what's present for me in talking with you is that you're really helping the asset owner get granularity on yellow, more than anything, and pushing the yellow back into the green in a more efficient manner, or helping them also avoid green going to yellow.
• 9:06
  Dan Leary: It's understanding why it's under or over performing, because we see plenty of times where models were made too conservative, and somebody probably left some money on the table somewhere, because the models are exceeding their performance. But you know the question, the question that has been asked of Sandia over the years is, we need to better understand under performance.
• 9:26
  Dan Leary: And the first question is, well, what is under performance? Is it? Is it actually the system's not working as well as they could? Is it that the models weren't quite adequate or as reliable or predictable as we'd want them to be? Is it our understanding of climate like, where is the problem happening?
• 9:44
  Dan Leary: So that's that's what this is all about.
• 9:49
  Tim Montague: Cool, and I'm just curious when you when you talk to customers who you know, pre, pre Denowatch, post Dino watts, what is the feedback they're giving you? You know people like Matt Murphy, who have been long term customers of yours. What is the aha for them?
• 10:10
  Dan Leary: The AHA is, is, is the efficiency that we can execute and deliver what we're promising for energy accounting, our greatest successes are with customers that have figured out that if they take the take a little bit of time and do our training, if they have good documentation, and they stay in good communication with us through our portal and Our software that they can very efficiently roll out and get the answers they need very quickly, and we do that in real time.
• 10:39
  Dan Leary: That's sort of the aha moment when people say, wow. The way that we've sort of viewed monitoring over the last 10 or 15 years that they've been building projects is like that doesn't have to be the way it's going to be happening for. The next 10 or 15 years, it's, it's, it's changing the efficiency and the way that we use data.
• 10:57
  Tim Montague: So in wrapping this up, we can't do things the way we've done in the past, right? We have to innovate and evolve. Please, please. It's a double edge, because in in some regards, I really resonate with what jigger Shaw says, right?
• 11:14
  Tim Montague: Just deploy, deploy, deploy.
• 11:14
  Tim Montague: We've got good enough technology to truly green the grid, and he is right. But by the same token, as the industry matures, we have to apply innovation and better technology and better partnerships. I'm hoping to talk to portside here, one of your partners. I love it that you guys are here side by side again. You know, we talked last year at the same show, but in terms of maturation, what's your message, you know, to asset owners, what's the wake up call?
• 11:49
  Dan Leary: Boy in uncertain times, fall back and start looking at your data. And let's, let's start understanding what opportunities we have in the data to to, you know, add profitability back into the operation. You know, thing, things are, things are going to improve. I think everybody here at the show as optimism that things are going to improve. But meanwhile, what a great opportunity to reflect on how we operate and the efficiency of our teams, and how are we going to grow tenfold over the next, say, 10 years or sooner, and still be able to deliver the results that our investors expect. That's that's the name.
• 12:31
  Tim Montague: Yeah. All right.
• 12:31
  Tim Montague: Well, thank you, Dan. Leary, I really appreciate you what you're doing with Denowatts, and you know, for all the mutual friendships that we've developed over the years, you know, I just want you to know I really appreciate you as a solar professional and a friend. So thank you. Thanks for spreading the good word. Tim, Dan, how can our listeners find you.
• 12:51
  Dan Leary: Denowatts.com.
• 12:54
  Tim Montague: All right, the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over 10 gigawatts shipped in the US.
• 13:06
  Tim Montague: The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand and is America's number one choice for solar plants, now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and Balance of System Requirements, go to Chint Power Systems com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more, we're here at re plus Boston, re plus northeast in Boston, with a partner of Denowatts called portside portside systems. I'm with Doug MacMillon. He's an engineer, and apparently he's also a nerd. He even said that himself, and I said, Dude, I'm a big nerd too, so we're good there. But what do you guys do?
• 14:08
  Doug Macmillan: So we're an engineering and engineered services company. We specialize in commissioning, Field Services, systems engineering, protection engineering, and then also building, you know, gas systems and magic boxes, as we like to call them. We have a ul 508 panel shop where we design and build a lot of the auxiliary equipment that's implemented on distributed generation sites, everything from the metering equipment to data acquisition equipment to utility interface equipment. So like all the RTU systems, remote interface gateways, dtts, like all the stuff that the utility requires for their interface back to their, you know, whatever their engineering control center is, and so utility.
• 14:56
  Tim Montague: So your customers are both developers and installers.
• 15:01
  Doug Macmillan: Developers, installers, EPCs, asset owners.
• 15:04
  Doug Macmillan: Depends on what what direction of the business or what part of the of our company that they're utilizing, but because we are oftentimes the commissioning agent for the system or for the site, you know, a lot of times we'll be working for either the EPC, sometimes, as we're sitting in the role of owners engineer, we'll be working for the developer or the asset owner, kind of representing their interests with respect to whoever's building the site. So we sit in a couple different seats, okay, and then we also build on a lot of the equipment that gets.
• 15:35
  Tim Montague: So last year when I, when I had Mark and Dan on the show, though, Dan kind of pulled me aside and he said, Tim, it's been a game changer for for me to develop this partnership with portside. And he, you know, he points to the magic box. And I think. Looks cool. I have no idea what's going on here, really, but so my question is, what is the game changer about portside? What are you guys doing that's special and different?
• 16:03
  Doug Macmillan: Sure. So, so what we provide is, and if you talk to Dan, as you have many times like, he identifies that the dental wash platform is a core technology, right? Like it's a hardware set, it's a software set, and it's harvesting data and analyzing that data, like, that's what that's what they're doing. And what we do is we are the implementers of that system as a whole for these distributed generation sites. And so effectively, what we're doing is we will get involved in the project, in the very beginning of the project, or during the design phase, and for the project develop the entire das System. I mean, a lot of them are, you know, they're very standardized, depending on the project size and whatever the asset owners requirements are.
• 16:47
  Doug Macmillan: But anyway, so we put the entire system together, more or less, if you can, like, extrapolate, we're, like, the system integrator of the project, and so we put that portion together, and then follow it through the project by both building and delivering the equipment, or, you know, sending the equipment to the site. And then a lot of times, we're the commissioning agent as well. So we commission, you know, various parts of the site, but including the das System. So the main thing that we're doing differently is we're effectively, like a group implementer for the denawatts platform. Partnered with Dena watts to basically, like, have that close relationship, so that, you know, there's, it's not really like a vendor and a consumer. It's a, you know, it's like a manufacturer and an engineering firm, you know, partnered together to make a really good, implemented total
• 17:34
  Tim Montague: system, and you'll go anywhere in the country.
• 17:37
  Tim Montague: Yeah. I mean, right now, we've
• 17:38
  Doug Macmillan: got a bunch of sites that are that are being built out in Minnesota. We've got the a lot of a lot of them that are being implemented throughout the Northeast. Our core service area for a lot of our commissioning services are based pretty much from, like Maryland, north, mostly because we have to travel around with a lot of test equipment, and so we're kind of limited by like, you know, drive distance. But our equipment are, like gas equipment, and other types of, you know, cabinets and systems that we build are being implemented in various parts of the country, there's really not a, not much of a limitation on that, just as long as we can ship it there, you know, get an LTL shipment. So, yeah, cool.
• 18:20
  Tim Montague: All right. Well, thank you so much. Check out all of our content at clean, Power Hour, calm. Tell a friend about the show. That's the best thing you can do to help others find this content. And Dan, how can our listeners, find portside.
• 18:32
  Doug Macmillan: I find us online. Portside assist. Calm.
• 18:36
  Doug Macmillan: And, you know, I probably
• 18:38
  Tim Montague: one of them. Yeah, any other trade shows you guys go to
• 18:42
  Doug Macmillan: re plus, typically the one we go to, the North Power and Energy Conference we usually go to, okay, so that's a good re Vegas.
• 18:47
  Doug Macmillan: We haven't been Ari Vegas, but okay, we hear good things about it, so might need to go.
• 18:54
  Tim Montague: Might be the year for you 2026 yeah, here we go.
• 18:57
  Tim Montague: All right on. Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage.
• 19:00
  Tim Montague: Thanks so much, Doug, thank you.
• 19:00
  Tim Montague: Appreciate it. Thank.