Ricerc@Sapienza

As in any power plant, photovoltaic (PV) power plants in operation require maintenance. In addition, more than 10 years after the first Italian feed-in tariff that is dated 2005, as the power plants become older, operation and maintenance (O&M) becomes more and more important for improving or keeping the performance of the plants.

Another aspect to be taken into account is that usually utility-scale grid-connected PV plants are in remote locations with unreliable communication and middle voltage (MV) distribution infrastructure. Most of the remote monitoring systems need an Internet connection, and in the absence of a reliable connection, there could be problems of lack of data logging for long periods of time. In addition, high penetration level of renewable distributed PV generation into current MV distribution grids is often impeded by technical barriers mainly due to their intermittent and non-dispatchable nature that poses serious problem for the energy management and operational planning of the grids and, in prospective, the future smart-grids.

System O&M and management of PV plants is a broad area and is the continuing focus of several industry/government/national laboratory working groups.

The proposed research - that will be developed in collaboration with a multi-stakeholder team in order to be a real-world research activity directly applied in their existing plants ¿ is aimed at defining, assessing and testing new methodologies, approaches and best practices in the O&M, monitoring and management of utility-scale grid-connected PV plants. The final ambitious goal is to develop widespread consensus approaches over the next two years.