In data we trust: Bringing the field closer to the boardroom
Asset Management

In data we trust: Bringing the field closer to the boardroom

We reasonable people make sound daily decisions based on data, whether we realize it or not.

Spot a police car parked ahead on the shoulder of the interstate? Slow down to avoid a speeding ticket.

Have a bad meal at a restaurant? Don’t order the same thing next time- or don’t come back.

Receive a compliment on an outfit? Wear it again, with pride.

But what happens when we internalize bad data? We make assumptions- and take actions- that we would have otherwise avoided.

What if that wasn’t a cop car, but a stranded motorist? What if you actually received someone else’s order by mistake, or that cherished compliment was a sarcastic one?

As the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning rapidly warp how we collect and consume information, we must be mindful of where data comes from and why it might be relevant (or not). To survive in a data economy, it is imperative to parse the good from the bad and make sense of what’s left.

That’s where Power Factors feels like it can make a difference.

Courtesy: Power Factors

Power Factors is a renewable asset management software company focused on optimizing every available kilowatt-hour of clean energy. It recently launched its new renewable energy management suite (REMS), Unity, which promises users the ability to manage the entire lifecycle of a diverse fleet of assets in one place. It portends to pluck dirty data from the field, sort and shine it up, and make it accessible to the suits calling the shots.

I had the opportunity to pick the brains of two members of the Power Factors team intimately involved in Unity’s genesis and invested in its success. The following includes snippets from my conversation with Robert Johnson, Power Factors senior market advisor, and Will Troppe, the company’s director of product.

The good, the bad, and the useful

What’s the key to truly unlocking a clean energy transition?

“It’s policy first,” Johnson admits. But beyond that?

“It’s data,” he offers. “It’s not so much some of the core technologies we have now. It’s managing the data, connecting the data.”

He points to current EV charging companies struggling with data, especially getting the information they need in time to act on it accordingly.

“And this manifests to consumers in unavailable equipment,” he says. “You go to charge your car, you try to plug in, and it’s not working.”

Similar challenges are occurring across the distributed energy resource (DER) landscape in general, but we don’t typically notice. They’re less tangible for consumers since they’re one step removed from the grid, Johnson points out, but it ain’t always sunshine and roses in DERville.

The future is distributed, and distribution is messy

The digital pages of this fine publication often foretell a seemingly inevitable future highlight a present in which distributed energy resources play a massive role in grid stability- whether its batteries helping ERCOT survive summer peak without issuing conservation requests or Sunrun celebrating one million residential solar systems providing customers with more than 2.8 million hours of backup power during 659,000 grid outage events.

“We’ve seen for a few years now the onslaught of high-penetration renewables and the complexity that introduces into managing the grid,” notices Power Factors’ Johnson. “At the same time, we’ve seen how messy and big the data is… And the data problem.”

Just think about it. Every renewable energy project produces a ton of data, from high-level (like a site’s nameplate capacity) to granular (like the performance of a single component) and everything in between. Gathering all that information is a Herculean task. Analyzing it is another monster entirely.

“The further distributed you get, the more complex your data volume becomes,” acknowledges Troppe. “An increase in data volume means an increase in data quality challenges.”

Is your power production changing faster than your ramp rate? That’s physically impossible.

Are you producing too much energy from your solar array relative to available sunlight? Bad data.

But who (or what) is going to flag those outliers? We need an arbiter responsible for making sense of signals coming in from the field, a provider of consensus amongst sensors.

The folks at Power Factors say there’s software for that.

From the field to the boardroom

“We want to ensure your cloud truth is always equal to your ground truth,” Troppe declares.

Unity’s tools are designed to create a pipeline from field technicians to the boardroom, surfacing insights directly from DERs that will impact reporting on corporate strategy.

To explain why data is the way it is, Power Factors focuses on providing visibility on the data path, the journey from device to output. That involves a lot of sophisticated systems, Johnson explains, but depending on your needs, you can trace it back and answer questions yourself.

“That generates trust in the data, and trust in the data is so fundamental,” says Johnson. “It’s a big challenge in the industry in general, and one we’ve been tackling for a long time.”

Courtesy: Power Factors

Many renewable energy developers work with numerous EPCs and equipment manufacturers across a portfolio of assets spread geographically across diverse regions.

“It’s a really tough problem reconciling all the discrepancies in those data approaches,” contends Johnson. “And we handle that for the customer.”

Unity reads data from the field, stores it, cleans it, and analyzes it.

The cleaning element is key. According to Troppe, assigning rules and automating the process is much more efficient than assigning people to do it. If raw data coming in from the field is marked as invalid by AI, algorithms can then determine the next-best source. Efficiently collecting and cleaning data enables developers to grow without hiring.

“We see AI as another vector of that (scaling headcount),” confirms Troppe.

Power Factors made strategic acquisitions to add a controls layer to its platform, allowing users to connect the dots between measurements like projected production data, weather forecasts, locational marginal pricing, energy storage dispatching, and other elements that make up a coherent grid.

“We generate events and analytics and identify opportunities for improved revenue optimization, delivered through a web portal,” Troppe continues.

“We contextualize and harmonize the data across a pretty heterogeneous landscape of OEMs and standards and design practices so customers can do apples-to-apples comparisons. It’s really a portfolio perspective,” concludes Johnson.

The secret sauce?

Power Factors’ Unity isn’t the only game in town when it comes to renewable energy management software. In the hockey stick growth era of AI, there’s an industry-wide gold rush for the best and the most reliable means to manage massive amounts of data.

But going fast doesn’t always mean doing it right. Troppe insists Power Factors took the time to put the fundamental building blocks of its platform in place before launching Unity.

“We know with AI, garbage in leads to garbage out. We also know that large training data contributes to superior AI models,” Troppe adds. “We have over 300 GW of clean energy data that we touch, so the result is stronger AI models and a stronger focus on getting the most important barriers out of the way.”

“Our other differentiator is the breadth of the platform,” adds Johnson. “They share a common backend but cover technical asset management, commercial asset management, field service management, energy management systems, field controls, and market operations.”

It’s about connecting siloed teams working on the same set of assets and reducing friction, Johnson maintains. Coordination across sectors keeps costs down, improves efficiency, and increases production capacity.

“And to preserve our sanity in working on these systems,” he laughs.

“In aggregate, tying those siloes together is going to help with the acceleration of renewables.”