Inside Cestas

300 MW Cestas project 300 MW Cestas project
Why is it that you think that having a hardware agnostic
monitoring solution is important, rather than the solutions
provided by the hardware providers themselves?
Hardware agnostic monitoring software is extremely important
for solar operators today, and we believe it will become requisite
in the future. From one country to another, technologies,
regulations, norms and subsequently solutions largely differ.
Besides, many producers pursue multi-energy strategies: solar,
onshore wind, offshore wind, biomass, and biogas. Within an
energy source, some producers also choose to pursue a multitechnology
strategy. On solar, it is possible to go with photovoltaics,
concentration, self-consumption facilities or hybrid
solar plants with hundreds of hardware solutions. Besides,
as long-term plants’ maintainability is a critical aspect, players
tend to select several hardware configuration sets to avoid
dependencies.
flows and reduce downtime. Email-based ticketing cannot be
an option, particularly now that IPPs manage hundreds of distributed
multi-energy facilities. With a fully integrated CMMS,
teams can collaborate on tickets to optimize system availability
and consequently financial performance. Can a field technician
waste time on the road due to a spare part error?
Examples such as the availability ratio calculation method
are numerous. Each client has his specific method to calculate
an availability ratio. They often want to customize this
calculation method depending on contract terms. To be specific,
should production losses related to preventative maintenance
interventions be included or excluded from the
energy availability ratio?
It can be very important to follow KPIs and SLAs, as underperformance
penalty fees are sometimes applicable. Our solution
friendly reporting feature that makes it easy to share any type
of technical, financial or maintenance report.
In what way does the QoS solution help optimize O&M? How
does this pay off financially for the owner or investor?
Our platform is organized in four main modules: monitor large
portfolios, analyze performance of each individual plant, maintain
plants, and manage assets. This makes it a fully integrated
tool for O&M service providers or energy producers. The development
of our platform has been subjected to the closest scrutiny
regarding the process of identification of defaults or nonquality
on large portfolios of plants.
The comprehensive control room of Qantum brings a mature
approach to the portfolio: The O&M team can concentrate on
black sheep by concentrating on events that really need attention.
Events are generated using control rules that users can
ity is even more important. A software should be intuitive, fast
and good looking. Our job, as a software developer, is to make
sure that the right thing comes in the right place on the screen
making complex portfolios easy to manage. Workflow optimization
is essential to keeping a lean organization. The O&M
team must be focused on critical events, not be distracted by
minor events. Access to the relevant information must be easy
and fast to solve issues. Portfolios are managed by small teams,
sometimes situated in different countries. Some plants can generate
more than 200 messages per day. Multiply this by the number
of plants and it becomes unmanageable.
Qos is diversifying outside of Europe. What have been some
projects internationally that Qos has been involved in?
The renewable market is now global. As a multi-energy monitoring
vendor, we cannot put all our eggs in the same basket
Energy performance, asset management and O&M is impossible
to manage without a unifying system that guarantees operational
homogeneity, regardless of technologies or plant localization.
How can operators manage multiple technologies without
a hardware agnostic solution? It is difficult nowadays and I
believe it will become almost impossible in the near future.
Why is it that you think that having a fully integrated
CMMS is important? How quickly do you believe this trend
will develop?
Our clients tell us every day that each additional percentage
has a tremendous impact on the bottom line. To reach a high
level of performance and availability, monitoring by itself is
not sufficient. All O&M parameters, including maintenance
workflows and team management, must be under control. This
must be associated with powerful analytics to prove efficient.
The CMMS becomes an essential feature to optimize work-
often serves as a calculation reference.
The Cestas project had a unique ownership structure, with
multiple investors across the different parts of the array. Do
you see this becoming more common in the development of
larger renewable projects in the future?
Solar business is very capitalistic. Many large IPPs are setting
up yieldcos. It is not unreasonable to believe that organizations
will need to share performance data seamlessly among shareholders,
O&M providers, asset managers and field technicians.
Everybody needs to have customization of both information
and access level.
Qantum as a multi-organization and multi-user solution is
designed for this purpose. Our platform allows the seamless
management of teams, contracts and users. Third parties, such
as maintenance contractors, can benefit from a secure limitedperimeter
access. Qantum also includes a powerful and user-
easily create and modify. The ticketing process, from creation
to closure, includes a mobile portal access for field services.
Users can flawlessly optimize and follow SLA commitments
of many contractors, regardless of the maintenance strategy
implemented (internally, subcontracted or both). Minimizing
downtime to reduce production losses is a main objective.
What are the additional costs of deploying a more sophisticated
software platform?
The additional cost is negligible compared to market solutions.
I believe the appropriate question is: How much are financial
losses because of unknown plant underperformance? The additional
cost is infinitesimal compared to the lever effect produced
by an efficient solution. This small investment can make millions
on large portfolios. It clearly is not a question of ‘sophistication:’
To each customer there is a dedicated answer. We have
designed our platform to be as integrated as possible but usabil-
by looking only at opportunities in Europe. Our European
clients – IPP, EPC, O&M companies, and asset managers –
develop their activities in different parts of the world and use
our solutions worldwide. We have to be present where our clients
develop their business. We have been present in France
and Germany from company creation, and more recently in
the U.K., USA and Japan. Our product can be customized to
any project which facilitates a lot our international development.
We have great ambitions and good reasons to think that
our growth will fast-track.
Qos has produced a video to spotlight its role on the Cestas project
and the advantages of the platform it provides to Neoen. It
can be accessed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQAGaiZAsns
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