Market // REVIEW
Solar O&M Market & Evolving Trends An insight into opportunities, progress and trends across solar PV O&M market in India...
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&M project outsourcing is critical for developers and plant owners so as to focus on their core business activities. While handling out a solar power plant under an O&M contract, the aspirations of the owners are for maximisation of generation output and plant life sustainability – as a typical Solar PV plant has life of over 20 years. In addition, the plant’s O&M has become even more important for ensuring overall productivity for the plant and can have significant effects on the project IRRs with lowering tariffs in India. Thus, the O&M service provider is largely responsible for the operation and maintenance of the solar power plant ensuring efficient and quality production levels throughout service cycle for the satisfaction of the customer
Market & Trends In recent years, the solar power industry in India has grown significantly. While the plant sizes are increasing, the developers are expecting improved performance levels that has opened up new market opportunities for Solar plant operation and maintenance service providers. The major trends that are shaping the solar O&M market in India include the number of factors. First of all, we are witnessing increased scale and density of solar plants in India backed by continued and strong market growth. Increased scale and density helps the vendors because the more plants you have in a given territory, www.powerinsight.vision-media.co.in
the more efficient you can become in serving these plants and the more you can optimize your costs. Further, over the years the sector has witnesses an increase in awareness and focus on these topics of O&M and asset management from the investors, from the developers and from EPCs as well. This increased recognition and focus from these key stakeholders has been playing a key role in shaping the Solar O&M and asset management market in India. In addition, now with more plants exiting their initial warranty period - the O&M market in India is opening up for fresh O&M contracts. Typically the O&M contracts are tied to a period that usually matches with the initial warranties. At the expiry of the warranties period, the holder is left with an option to either choose to extend the contract with the original supplying provider (often by the EPC or the Developer) or to move to a thirdparty service provider.
Evolution of Independent Players It is important for industries to rely on the expertise of solar PV O&M companies for the need for daily and optimum solar panel management. Though, many a time companies and plant owners engaged in solar PV projects believe they can perform O&M activities through an available in-house team. On the other hand, solar PV EPC providers believe that they are in a better position to carry out O&M activities, since they have built the project and are also
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Power Insight
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October - November 2019
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