Executive Summary
Buildings Evolved was engaged by SINSW to develop a solar PV data ingestion system to solve device and network integration issues via standardised and open technology frameworks. The solution eliminated vendor ‘lock-in’, reduced costs and facilitated data integration and ingestion to better monitor and analyse plant and equipment across the portfolio.
Schools Infrastructure NSW has approximately 2,300 schools across the state, 1600 of which have solar PV systems. Typically, a vendor solution is used for monitoring the systems through a variety of redundant devices. This mix of failing technologies has restricted data access and visibility and impeded the operational efficiency and effectiveness of solar PV assets across the portfolio.
We provided various uplift procedures to supplant redundant and ineffective devices across the portfolio. Our solution has enabled data ingestion and monitoring of inverters and enabled integration with electricity gate metering for analytics and created the potential for smart controlled applications. This new potential has enabled the following operational capabilities:
- power factor correction,
- broad scale demand response,
- network stability support services, and beyond that,
- operating the school’s PV network as a virtual power plant.
Our solution eliminated SMA vendor ‘lock-in’ saving 500k in infrastructure upgrades by avoiding the need to upgrade all Webbox’s across the school’s portfolio. Our solution opened the portfolio to the modern and dynamic capabilities emerging from smart IoT applications and functionality.