Europe is the continent with the largest and oldest fleet of solar plants, we need proper health care for the assets to meet performance expectations. These O&M Best Practices Guidelines are necessary for the European solar industry to stay healthy and continue to grow long term" said James Watson, CEO of SolarPower Europe.
Vassilis Papaeconomou, Managing Director at Alectris and O&M Task Force Leader for SolarPower Europe, commented: "The guidelines draw on years of experience from some of the largest players in the industry and are therefore the most authoritative guidance on how to optimize technical and economic performance of solar PV systems. Over the course of the past twelve months, the O&M Task Force has extensively refined the guidelines and included an additional chapter on technical asset management and cybersecurity. With this report we aim to establish an industry-wide standard for professional O&M which will be of great benefit to our sector".
Contributor to the Guidelines Paul Barwell, CEO of UK Solar Trade Association says: "O&M has often been considered a standalone segment in the solar value chain, but this can't be the case anymore if we want to take the European industry to the next level.
Another new feature of the version 2.0 O&M Best Practices Guidelines is contractual recommendations in line with the recently established Global Solar Energy Standardisation Initiative (SESI), a collaborative initiative of the International Renewable Energy Agency and the Terrawatt Initiative, with the strong support of SolarPower Europe and the Global Solar Council, to harmonise standards in the solar industry.
"The SESI is an important collaboration between the solar industry, legal sector as well as other stakeholders from finance, insurance and beyond, which aims to streamline and reduce costs to enable the deployment of solar globally. Not only will there be a standard contract for O&M, part of a complete package of documents covering all aspects for developing and financing a solar project, but we now have published the road map on how to fulfill this contract. The potential to reduce costs is further strengthened with the convergence of a standardised contractual framework and the O&M Best Practices Guidelines. What we are creating is a complete toolkit for effective, cost efficient and simplified solar O&M" said Nicole Iseppi and Jean-Pascal Pham-Ba of Terrawatt Initiative, on behalf of the Global Solar Energy Standardisation Initiative. (HCN)
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