Solar Software Solutions – Analysis for the Stakeholders

In the coming future when we see increasing role and use of technology in various domains of the solar energy sector especially in operations and maintenance. Technological and software solutions for managing the operations of the large scale and distributed plants seem to be the necessity. Sophisticated Software Solutions for analytics, plant service management, documents and contract management, project management, monitoring through IoT and asset management which kind of comprise the solar ERP i.e. Enterprise Resource Planning system are coming.

However, the adoption of these solutions are still very less and there are again a number of reasons why the adoption is less. To mention a few:

1. Cost
2. User Interface
3. User Experience
4. On-premise vs cloud applications
5. Hardware and SCADA problem
6. Internet connectivity
7. Lack of knowledge and awareness
8. Resistance from people using it
9. Lack of proper training and on-boarding
10. Actual need vs solution/product provided

These software solutions for solar power plant management are very sophisticated and automate a lot of processes thus improving productivity, reducing cost and enabling stakeholders to make data-driven decisions. Solar Companies need to adopt the software solutions for plant management and technical workforce at the site including the engineers, technicians, and the facility management staff need to get themselves trained in using these technologies.

Why I am writing this blog is because I see a lot of technical field personnel finding it difficult to use these solutions through a mobile or web application despite being given formal training. I also see people at senior engineer and plant manager level about being unaware of these software solutions or saying that they know about these, but they haven’t used it. Not only the people at field level or in operations but also the people at senior management level and decision makers need to start using these software solutions for better outcome from their investments in Solar. So, this is going to be the future, and all the stakeholders needs to upskill themselves.

I am especially trying to reach out to all the technicians, engineers and plant managers through this post is that if your company is one of the few which has gone ahead with implementation of these software solutions, then please start to learn these and start using these as it will help you to provide an edge over other candidates while trying for new job or getting a promotion in your current company as demand for personnel with these skills will increase). This will also help you to get a better salary compared to your peers. In today’s world just knowing your technical work is not enough. You need to upskill yourself in these areas using the latest technology and software solutions.