How Digital Twins and Parklife are changing the Solar industry

Parklife presents a new vision of the digitalization of photovoltaic assets – a vision that is more ambitious, complete and aimed towards the sustainable management of the value of the installations.

For Quintas Energy, this new model is the foundation for a new kind of asset and maintenance management, especially adapted to the complexity of the new level of competitiveness in the international energy markets and to the demand for better results that guarantee a better return on the investment from the owners of photovoltaic assets. To do this, Quintas takes advantage to the fullest of the newest technological capabilities, especially those related to predictive analytics.

Quintas Energy has strongly bet on new and more efficient automation technologies for its processes, whereupon the company finds itself going through a period of digital transformation to not only adapt to the needs of the market, but to pioneer that market through new and ambitious projects.

As its principal innovation, Parklife sets out an innovative digital twin model for the maintenance of renewable energy systems, particularly photovoltaic installations. With this model, all the available information about the asset throughout its entire lifecycle can be structured and organised in the most optimised way possible considering the most important generation processes and the objectives of the organisation, such as the interoperability between systems and available technologies.

Parklife allows for reliable management based on having complete knowledge (behaviour and deterioration) of the solar PV asset. This allows Quintas Energy to ensure a unique service when it comes to improving performance and reducing costs.

This upgrade is essential with respect to competitiveness in the market and to the profitability of the installations that are in operation. Parklife is the cornerstone for Quintas Energy’s business growth strategy. The new model addresses some of the main problems currently faced by the PV assets management, such as:

• The need for a new service model based on maximum exploitation of the available information and on the definitive integration of monitoring and analytic techniques.
• The need to correctly structure all the data/information/knowledge of a PV asset stemming from all the technologies and sources of information present in the asset itself, or those which interact with it.
• The consideration, as a key aspect, of the decision-making processes that concern the comprehensive improvement of the eco-efficiency of the asset throughout its lifespan
• The practical and specific definition of digital twins for the predictive management of maintenance, that is a standard complete model which can be used practically with any type of PV generation installation, technology and/or information system
• The constant evolution of Quintas personnel, always effectively introducing new applied skills when the company identifies new service models that will be of better value to its clients based on technologies 4.0

Parklife is about making the biggest impact on the innovation and the internationalisation of the company. The current position of Quintas on an international level within the sector, and its future projections, make it the best independent solution for the management of renewable assets and puts the company in an excellent position to obtain maximum efficiency and performance from a solution such as Parklife, that has been developed in cooperation with the University of Seville.

Proyecto subvencionado por el CDTI y apoyado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación con una ayuda cofinanciada por fondos FEDER a través del “Programa Operativo de Crecimiento Inteligente 2014-2020” y fondos propios del CDTI.