Solar Sentry specializes in solar
array diagnostics for commercial-scale solar electric sites. Most solar
photovoltaic sites today collect overall energy production data and
diagnostics information from the inverter(s) that connect the solar
array to the power grid. While this information can help operations
personnel discover and deal with major outages, significant problems in
the array of solar panels often go undiagnosed, negatively impacting the
production of electricity and the owners’ financial return on their
investment.
Our unique patent-pending technology
embeds smart wireless sensors in solar panels, allowing us to
continuously evaluate individual performance and connectivity to the
system. Using inexpensive wireless communications and a secure internet
data channel, our diagnostic products and services collect data from
each site every few minutes. This lets our analytic software pinpoint
the exact location of any connection failures or underperforming solar
panels and communicate actionable information to our customers, enabling
them to make appropriate repairs quickly, safely and cost-effectively.
Unlike inverters that have no knowledge of the internal
operation of the array of solar panels, we collect detailed granular
information allowing us to pinpoint the nature and location of
virtually any problem in the solar array, including:
•
all array connection failures
•
intermittent connection failures
•
defective solar panels
•
partially defective solar panels
• out-of-spec
solar panels
•
soiled solar panels
•
panel shading
•
defective bypass diodes
•
blown fuses
• array
to inverter wiring
Economic Benefit
We believe most commercial-scale photovoltaic power sites are
underperforming by 5% or more due to undiagnosed problems in their solar
arrays. A 5% gain in output power from the use of our diagnostic
products and services is expected to return an after-tax IRR in excess
of 20%.
Courtesy of DOE/NREL, Credit - SMUD
A typical
commercial-scale solar photovoltaic site has 1,000 or more solar
panels (modules). With today’s monitoring solutions, significant
problems in the solar array go undetected. If and when they are
suspected, the absence of actionable diagnostic information forces
the owner to either ignore the problem or deploy skilled technicians
to the site to manually search for the problem. This process is
costly, hazardous and time-consuming.
Awarded NYSERDA contract for clean energy business
growth and development
