DataGlen’s mission is to provide energy for all by enabling and managing the Distributed Energy Resource (DER) systems. Its core offering is an IoT Platform and gateways, incorporated with machine learning, cloud and edge intelligence technologies. It interacts with real-world devices to securely collect, curate, and store high volume time-series data, and a framework/dashboard for configurable data analytics and visualization. Currently, it has three IoT solutions — Solar Asset Management, Generation Management and Storage Optimization which are in different stages of commercialization, with the Solar Asset Management solution contributing the major portion of the current revenue.
Dataglen SunDash – The Solar Asset Management solution gives real-time visibility across solar assets offering rich predictive analytics and actionable insights to Independent Power Producers, Engineering Procurement Construction companies and solar OEMs'. Using cloud-based remote monitoring technologies DataGlen can monitor and capture data from inverters, AJB’s SMU’s, Weather monitoring stations and energy meters to run intelligent analytics on top of it, giving better operational control, performance visibility, portfolio management and access control.
The distributed grid systems and solar O&Ms face considerable challenges in dealing with the erratic and fluctuating nature of the power generated due to factors like,
Inefficient methods of panel cleaning: Soiling losses reduce the efficiency of the plant by ~5-10%. For a 50 MW plant, this amounts to ~30MWh(INR 1,80,000) loss per day
Nonpredictive System failures leading to substantial losses: Factors like MPPT failure, MPPT/ inverter underperformance, Inverter alarm failure, communication failure at the string level, Gateway failure, Grid unavailability, Internet failures, Sensor breakdowns, and meter tampering result in undesirable fluctuations in MPPTs current
Penalties for erratic power production: Absence of smart demand response systems to tackle excess production and supply results in irregular power production and IPPs are charged heftily for non-compliance with accurate forecasting
Need for curtailment: In situations where the grid is overloaded, generation is to be limited to the consumption with no export to the grid
Manage the asset portfolio performance: Hardware incompatibilities at a monitoring level is often challenging for large
scale utility and rooftop players from a portfolio management perspective
Customers primarily gain real-time insights into assets operations, swiftly identify and resolve maintenance issues and boost their annual plant revenue to the tune of 7-20%
Corrective maintenance: Automated ticketing alerts (email/SMS) which will reduce the outage and downtime significantly. It also creates a knowledge base by creating failure analysis and report generation
Preventive maintenance: Early detection of underperforming devices to enable warranty enforcements. Documentation of events and cleaning recommendations to reduce soiling losses
Reduced O&M expenses: Helping optimize personnel resources to enable completely remote based O&M, analyse weather parameters that influence generation, daily generation alerts and monthly billing reports
Condition based maintenance: Integrate plants across the world in a single dashboard irrespective of the hardware configuration. Real-time monitoring of AC and DC subsystems and predicted failures thereby reducing the downtime. It also provides performance optimization and recommendation for system maintenance based on grid conditions
Once the energy storage systems are also in place, to increase the GRID resiliency, energy players will look for monitoring and analytics solutions around Intelligent feeders and relays, Micro Grid systems, Automated switches, Increased Responsiveness, Automated Demand Management and Advanced Metering Infrastructure. DataGlen would be focusing on developing the required IoT based solutions for Asset Management (solar/wind), Micro grids, Energy Storage and Virtual Power Plants.
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