With the world moving more towards renewable sources of energy to power our daily lives, iWire’s SmartRenew monitors every installation (Solar or Wind) to help you to stay informed about what the system is producing and how well it’s performing.
Whether you’re using the energy to power your own building or selling the extra energy for a fixed price to a utility company, you need to know when something goes wrong so you can address the problem quickly—and continue to derive the maximum benefit from your investment.
Picture a solar array on a roof or in a field. It’s made up of thousands of solar panels, all of which are independently producing some amount of electricity. All of them are wired together back to a central point, where solar inverters convert the direct current (DC) energy produced by the panels into alternating current (AC) energy that can be used to power building components.
Or picture a WIND energy farm, more often than not, kept in remote, hard to access areas. You need to know how each turbine is performing, which one is performing at an optimum level, which one is likely to cause a problem (predictive) and take necessary action before the issue becomes chronic.
iWire’s SmartRenew just all this and much more. Using SIGFOX enabled devices and sensors, the system collects data from various sensors and using AI and ML, helps you ensure optimum output, day after day.
What’s being monitored?
Monitoring systems provide a wealth of information about the performance of a solar system. Sensors can help monitor external conditions such as:
- Wind speed
- Radiance of the sun
- Temperature
- Cell temperature
They also measure elements surrounding system performance, such as:
- String voltage
- Inverter performance
- Actual vs. modeled energy production
- System output (the AC electric energy)
- Battery voltage levels to determine battery health
With condition-based maintenance, repairs are performed only after certain indicators show evidence of decreasing performance of key components / equipment, or if an upcoming failure is detected.
This strategy allows maintenance to be carried out on an as-needed basis, allowing the best planning of activities reducing logistic and material costs while increasing availability. It also allows the costs associated with maintenance to be drastically cut by minimizing the occurrence of serious faults.
