Earlier this year in a webinar the Director of Business Development at Locus Energy, Gabe Abbott, offered his top four predictions for the future of solar monitoring. Below is a recap outlining the highlights in further detail.
1. Better integration streamlining the business process
Abbott was very vocal about his belief of better technical integrations when it comes to streamlining the solar monitoring business. Such integrations can take place across the board from O&M, right down to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, as well as tackle asset management.
Solar monitoring providers must understand that they might not build the greatest ERP and CRM systems in their platforms and at the end of the day their clients may not even expect that from them. The same can be said for O&M and asset management, as there may be other providers that their clients would rather utilise.
As stated by Abbott; “As a solar monitoring provider, I think it’s important to be open to building out those integrations with third party platforms and services so that your customers can get the full value of those elements and the best solution for their business use case.”
2. Abbott claims fleet analytics will only improve over time
Gabe Abbott is very confident that fleet analytics, as a whole, will improve as there have already been major advancements within this sector as solar monitoring providers are coming to the party.
Abbott went further to say the discussion of performance will also interest the financial community; “you hear a lot of talk about securitization and about the financiers and the banks getting really interested in understanding solar better and opening up gates to more capital investment,” he explained. “Solar monitoring providers are in a unique position to provide the insight those entities need to become more comfortable with solar and understand the risk profile and the details so they can feel confident in making broader investments. This is good thing for the industry at large and certainly for the customers of solar monitoring companies.”
3. Better inverter control measures
Such requirements are increasingly seen on larger-scale projects while also having a presence at smaller sites such as rooftop installations. According to Abbott, “we’re already seeing some providers allowing control of their products via third party integration”.
4. Solar monitoring working together with growing energy storage industry
The last key point of the webinar outlined how solar monitoring will work hand in hand with improved energy storage, as well as residential network electronics. Abbott explained that as more and more home-owners purchase smart devices, solar monitoring providers will need to work out where exactly they fit into the puzzle. “This will be one of the interesting developments to watch over the next couple of years. It’s certainly an exciting time for solar monitoring,” he ended off.
