Revamping: Giving New Life to Your Solar PV Plant

What is revamping? 

In the photovoltaic industry, the term “revamping” or “repowering” means the modernisation of an existing photovoltaic plant, replacing, for instance, one or more of its components. 

In this way, the capacity of the plant can be increased and its useful life extended, particularly in those countries where the irradiation is high. This therefore leads to high performance and more hours of equipment operation. 

There are already many solar plants 10 years old or more, surpassing their components’ warranties. More than 40 GW of PV systems in Europe above 100 kW are more than 5 years old.  These solar PV plants were built with the technology, and on the viable business case, at that time. Yet as efficiency or reliability decreases, operating expenditure increases.  

How is revamping conducted? 

Performing the revamping consists of correcting the limitations derived from the outdated design of the plant or other technical limitations inherited from the time it was installed ( inverter faults, degradation in PV modules, etc) . 

Replacing equipment that is failing, and may not be manufactured anymore, would improve availability and reduce costs and, therefore, increase their efficiency. 

 In this way, the owner of the assets can improve, for instance, the communications or integrate new products, such as an external memory to prepare plants for future innovations and technical advances. 

How can revamping help? 

If the photovoltaic inverter does not provide the expected performance due to failures or equipment increasing in age, the entire financial plan may be affected. However, replacing the existing PV inverter with newer, higher capacity devices can increase revenues. 

A recent study issued by SMA has shown that inverter faults are responsible for more than 69% of all incidents involving a loss of production of the entire PV plant, especially in assets of more than 10 years. 

 How can Greensolver help? 

Greensolver can carry out a technical due diligence where the performance and quality of the solar modules, trackers, inverters, transformers, etc. are analysed to determine: 

•  The conversion efficiency of the equipment.  
• The working temperatures. 
• Energy consumption. 

Multidisciplinary approaches are taken by Greensolver (i.e., technical, financial, legal, regulatory) to determine what type of authorisations, permits and requirements are necessary to carry out the revamping. 

Written by Alberto Santos, Asset Manager