Page 8 - North American Clean Energy January/February 2020 Issue

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Digital Reality
It’s time for boardrooms to get a grip on digitalization
by Jonas Corné
Despite being responsible for many of the amazing technological developments in
the renewables industry, including sophisticated performance monitoring and asset management, the benefits of digitalization are still not being fully recognized by top level executives, from asset managers to investors. Data managers are left with no choice but to push for data-led approaches from the bottom up.
This is a mistake, and a big one.
Digitalization plays a crucial role in today’s renewables market - senior execs who ignore it, or treat it as a “nice to have”, are missing out on an enormous opportunity to increase their revenue and decrease their costs. They’re throwing away the opportunity for maximized asset productivity and availability. Ironically, many companies remain unaware of the wider financial and operational benefits that digitalization can bring, simply because they lack the data management abilities needed to effectively measure it.
Never before have portfolio owners been able to gather data with such speed, quality, and scale. The benefits are obvious for all who care to look. Identifying marginal gains, accurate forecasting of future issues, and recognition of good investment opportunities, are some valuable outcomes that enable renewable energy portfolio owners to better analyze and act on data.
While you can find a number of portfolio owners who have made asset management and monitoring software choices that ultimately led them down a “data dead-end”, this doesn’t mean that boardrooms should be hesitant about adopting a data-led approach.
Software developers have already begun creating versatile solutions that de-risk the investment for boardrooms, by creating technology and OEM-agnostic data hubs and marketplace-style app stores. This enables collaboration between software developers, portfolio owners, and asset managers - to not only ensure the highest standards of data management, but accelerate the pace of software innovation.
Sophisticated, investor-backed portfolio owners in the North American renewables sector already recognize the value that data-led approaches can bring. Obtaining data from technologically and geographically diverse sources, optimizing existing assets, and avoiding financial losses caused by lower asset availability, have made digitalization absolutely essential to the competitiveness of renewable energy portfolio owners.
Boardrooms need to get “on board”
The first step to realizing an opportunity is recognizing that there is one - renewable energy asset owner and investor boardrooms need to wake up to new data opportunities. Unless they stop seeing data-driven value as a “nice to have”, they face the very real consequence of productivity and financial losses.
At a recent Forum event, data managers from almost 100 global renewable energy companies agreed that, in today’s market, as new technology continues to develop and
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