Solar installations won’t perform to their highest potential without routine operations and maintenance (O&M) services. With routine operations and maintenance services, comes routine operations and maintenance cost. How much will this routine operations and maintenance cost your business or organization? Keep reading to find out.
Operations and maintenance services are the processes of upkeep for your solar photovoltaic (PV) system. For each unique project, O&M services ensure that system uptime and production are optimized, optimizing return on investment. There are four different types of O&M services: reliability centered, preventative, predictive and reactive maintenance. Click the link below to learn more about each type.
Read What is Operations and Maintenance?
How much does operations and maintenance cost?
The operations and maintenance cost can vary depending on the solar system, its requirements and each individual O&M contract. However, according to NRELthere is a new, more standardized approach that can decrease the cost of O&M and make them more predictable over time. Costs associated with determining PV O&M costs are annual cash flow, net present value and reserve account.
Annual cash flow includes costs for scheduled and preventative maintenance on regular intervals along with costs for corrective maintenance and replacement costs (can change depending on the probability of failure that year). Reserve account costs can give a good estimate of cost per life cycle. Depending on your agreement and project, these variable factors and more will determine the cost of O&M.
There are two things that will offset operations and maintenance cost: utility savings and revenue from increased performance. Currently, 34% of unexpected equipment downtime in the U.S. is due to aging equipment. This unexpected downtime will cost your company or organization time and money. Unexpected downtime can be avoided with proper O&M services in place. O&M services will increase renewable energy systems lifetime, which will save money that would have been spent on a new system. O&M services will also increase energy delivery, allowing your company or organization more independence from the local grid and increased utility savings.
O&M services include performance monitoring which increases system performance. These services have been known to improve the performance of solar photovoltaic systems from 92 to 95%, which substantially increases revenue flow and mitigates the operations and maintenance cost. Click the link below to read more about the benefits of O&M.
Read 3 Benefits of Operations and Maintenance
Start a project with O&M services included
Partner with EnergyLink for assurances that your energy project is producing the results you expect. EnergyLink is a certified energy service company (ESCO) that designs projects for a range of commercial and industrial organizations and offers routine O&M services. Click here to take a look at one of the projects EnergyLink performed operations and maintenance services on through daily monitoring and monthly reporting.
We will be your partner throughout each state of your renewable or energy efficiency project and we also offer multiple types of funding for our clients. Project financing agreements like MESAs, PPAs, ESAs and SSAs include O&M services in their contracts. Click the link below to get started or dial (866) 218-0380 to speak with a team member directly.
