SaaS offerings tailored for plant operators and project managers yield high ROI from commercial solar portfolios and plants
San Jose, Calif. - September 15, 2009 - Fat Spaniel Technologies, Inc. today announced a new family of Lifecycle Management solutions for the renewable energy industry. Fat Spaniel Solar Plant VisionTM and Solar Operations ServicesTM build on the company’s experience pioneering technology and providing solutions for 2,500 solar photovoltaic (PV) plants around the world. The first two Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) editions of Solar Plant Vision meet the needs of solar PV plant operators and project developers. For customers that want a turnkey service, Solar Operations Services complement the company’s SaaS offering with a staff of operations experts that oversee and manage daily operations. The new Fat Spaniel Lifecycle Management solutions are tailored for the business models and distinct job functions spanning commercial, municipal, federal, utility, educational, and residential solar projects.
“Complexities are inherent in every stage of the solar portfolio life-cycle planning, design, deployment, and day-to-day operations,” said Ned Chaney, Business Director of American Capitol Energy. “An optimized management platform is essential for driving down costs and remaining competitive. Fat Spaniel Lifecycle Management services give us the efficiencies of SaaS and the benefits of Fat Spaniel’s relationships with device manufacturers. The end-to-end solution overcomes the challenges of integration and management, and allows us to focus on our business goals.”
“Until recently, the primary focus of the renewable energy industry has been on improving and augmenting generation to drive costs down to accelerate the rate of adoption,” said Al Velosa, Research Director at Gartner. “However, many are only now beginning to realize that efficient life-cycle and performance management is essential in achieving these goals, leading to increased asset value and reduced risk. As we work to create a low carbon economy, the use of IT marks the next benchmark for solar. In fact, the use of IT will be essential to facilitate the solar industry’s business model.”
“Solar developers, integrators, and operations personnel currently rely on imprecise tools with error rates of +/-20 percent-which significantly impacts financial returns and plant efficiency,” said Matt Powell, CEO of Fat Spaniel Technologies. “The solar industry is at a critical juncture, and if it is to reach its full potential, life-cycle management solutions must be designed into a system from site conception, to drive financial success and reduce risk. We look forward to the continuing expansion of our Lifecycle Management family of services-our technology can help achieve the goal of making renewable energy #1 in the world.”
Solar Plant Vision: Portfolio and Plant Management for Distributed Solar Sites
Solar Plant Vision services deliver high-accuracy, predictive capabilities that address complete lifecycle management. Tailored to operations and maintenance (O&M) teams and project managers, the solutions help optimize solar plant production and overall portfolio performance. Complete operational and diagnostic data is collected continually; environmental data can be gathered from plant locations or downloaded from satellite services. Breakthrough capabilities are focused in three areas:
- Plant Management: A full range of device monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance tracking maximizes production while minimizing costs.
- Revenue Management: Billing and reporting features simplify financial and compliance management efforts.
- Marketing and Education: Real-time portfolio status can be displayed on Internet-connected PCs to educate energy consumers, or displayed in kiosks located in lobbies, retail stores, and other public places where clean energy can be promoted and marketed.
Solar Plant Vision lets today’s operators achieve industry-leading results including increased plant uptime, meeting or exceeding Power Purchase Agreement terms, and driving down total maintenance costs by up to 30%.
Solar Operations Services (SOS): A Team of Management Experts
SOS combines Fat Spaniel’s industry-leading Lifecycle Management platform with an experienced staff that delivers plant management based on customer-defined service-level agreements. Portfolio managers gain increased energy output, maximum system uptime, and cost-efficient, predictable costs. To accommodate future insourcing, a build-operate-transfer (BOT) option can be included. Both short- and long-term SOS contracts give customers complete flexibility, and make it easy to adjust for business and operations dynamics.
Availability
Solar Plant Vision Premium Edition provides end-to-end life-cycle management capabilities to O&M and project management teams. The SaaS service speeds start up, and offers affordable terms based on plant scale. Solar Plant Vision Base Edition provides a stand-alone software solution to customers that only need base-level monitoring, reporting, and visualization capabilities. Solar Plant Vision Base and Premium Editions and Solar Operations Services can be quoted immediately, and will be available starting in October 2009. The 500+ solar plant operators who depend on Insight Manager, Fat Spaniel’s legacy solar plant management offering, will be given an automatic upgrade to Solar Plant Vision when it becomes available.
About Fat Spaniel
Fat Spaniel Technologies, Inc. is the leading provider of Lifecycle Management services for the renewable energy industry. Solar power producers, financiers, system integrators, plant owners, and OEMs take advantage of Fat Spaniel’s category-defining Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to maximize system uptime, energy output, and return on investment. Fat Spaniel is a trusted third-party service provider, offering an open platform for remote system performance management, plant diagnostics and maintenance automation, revenue-grade billing, REC trading, and performance-based incentive collection. Fat Spaniel Lifecycle Management technology and services empower renewable energy component vendors to provide fully manageable solutions and inspire application developers to innovate advanced Web-based energy applications and visualizations. Fat Spaniel solutions are deployed in 20 countries and more than 2,500 locations worldwide. With its partners and customers, Fat Spaniel shares the vision of a world where renewable energy is the first and best energy source. For more information, please visit www.fatspaniel.com.
Tags: Gartner Group, lifecycle management, SaaS, solar, solar PV