Page 9 - North American Clean Energy January/February 2020 Issue

outdate current practices (and without subsidies or full-service maintenance warranties), executives need to support and update data management strategies to keep up.
However, with over 40 percent
of data managers believing that industry executives have only a partial understanding of their role, and 36 percent stating that their Board either allocates no financial value to their work or fails to give it any serious oversight, many renewable energy portfolios remain unable to effectively gather the data required to fully optimize their assets.
While data managers understand the opportunities digitalization can bring, they still need a top-down implementation of digital approaches. Boardrooms must follow the example of other sophisticated renewable energy portfolio owners in North America that have implemented a fully digitized approach, to create wide-ranging transparency on asset performance, and accountability amongst third party asset managers.
Solving data dead-ends
Some businesses that chose to invest early in digital asset management approaches have been burned, which explains much of the current reticence among senior teams.
Data dead-ends that have been encountered (software provider insolvency, single technology support, reliance on bespoke, in- house systems) have undoubtedly slowed the pace of software innovation in the renewable energy industry. Fortunately, the creation of marketplace-style app stores
and cloud computing data hubs shows that these obstacles are being overcome by software developers.
Portfolio owners need to be able to continuously evolve and collaborate with software developers and other industry players in order to expand and diversify their portfolio with
new asset or Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) technologies. If they fail to do so, they will limit future growth opportunities and reduce their competitiveness.
This can be easily avoided by selecting a software platform that remains technology- and OEM- agnostic, allowing for flexibility when developing or acquiring new assets. Cloud platforms that act as “data hubs”, with the ability to gather data from all sources irrespective of OEM technology or asset type, already exist, and can provide portfolio owners and asset managers with opportunities to innovate around the performance monitoring process.
accelerate the pace of software innovation by enabling
portfolio owners to collaborate with multiple renewable energy software providers in the development of highly sophisticated applications. When integrated with cloud software, portfolio owners can choose from a greater range of software applications, allowing them to tailor their performance monitoring dashboards to their specific needs.
Boardrooms and top-level executives must begin to develop the same understanding of digitalization and its benefits as their data managers. An investment in asset management and
monitoring software – providing it is in a versatile and “future- proof” platform – does not carry the same level of risk that
it may once have. More importantly, it is no longer a “nice- to-have”, but a critical part of portfolio management that is fundamental to profitable operation.
Jonas Corné is CEO of Greenbyte, a developer and enabler of smart data software to drive productivity in renewables.
Greenbyte /// www.greenbyte.com
In addition, “app stores” can
North American Clean Energy
9