Maintenance, servicing, inspection, and overhauls – not the sort of issues industrial enterprises debate any more; they’re an everyday reality. Until aspects such as eProcurement and eBusiness start entering into the equation and it suddenly becomes necessary to integrate them into existing IT solutions. eBusInstand is a development project backed by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Its aim is to define the prerequisites and options for standardizing and optimizing electronic business transactions at all stages of the process chain in industrial maintenance. Steinbeis has been asked to look at photovoltaics – known by many as solar energy.
The eBusInstand project is designed to foster the application of standards and the optimization of eBusiness processes in maintenance service provision. eBusiness has yet to filter through to all areas of the service industry. Until now, not enough solutions have been based on uniform standards, which would make it possible to harmonize processes for invitations to tender, proposal submissions, and processing.
As part of the eBusInstand project, end-to-end eBusiness processes and interfaces are being identified and tried out in the area between customers and suppliers. Coordinated by FZI, the Karlsruhe-based computer science research center, eleven German companies are working together with standardization specialist eCl@ss to pinpoint the prerequisites and options for applying standards to the management of assembly, maintenance and repair services. The remit also extends to materials needed to carry out such activities.
Nine example projects were drawn on to identify and test uniform, systematic eBusiness processes and the types of interfaces needed in service and maintenance. The aim: to provide reference cases for further standardization of service procurement and management. As well as classic services – such as machine maintenance – emphasis was placed on industrial maintenance services in the field of renewable energy.
Very little attention has been paid until now to the (remote) maintenance and monitoring of photovoltaic systems as a field of industrial servicing. Services relating to buildings or plants, such as maintenance and inspection, are normally arranged on an individual basis (plant by plant). For such fields, it was therefore decided to select a process based on tried and tested methods, which would capture the scope and intensity of maintenance on such plants.
Solar power installations are a major investment. Economic viability depends on ongoing high performance and fault-free operation – lasting at least for the period covered by subsidies under the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). This need for reliable performance thus applies equally to maintenance and monitoring processes. It also has a bearing on the hardware used to measure and capture data. Faults and downtime have an extremely detrimental effect on the potential overall yield of photovoltaic equipment, especially in the more lucrative summer months if faults are not identified quickly and insufficient remedial action is taken to eliminate errors.
As a result, it is essential to carry out regular servicing hand-in-hand with technical monitoring. Remote surveillance of equipment makes it possible to capture data needed to plan and execute proactive maintenance schedules. Armed with a comprehensive arsenal of data, it is even possible to detect gradual deterioration early and document it. This is particularly important for guarantees provided by equipment manufacturers and is thus what plant operators focus on first.
In cooperation with Infraserv Höchst and Schwäbisch Hall-based iPLON, the Steinbeis Consulting Center Development Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency worked with its standardization partners on a series of possible solutions to monitor and standardize the process of (remote) maintenance of photovoltaic equipment. The interesting aspect in this field is not so much the commonalities with maintenance process in the rest of industry, but the differences: it is rare to find classic supply chains or the types of service provides found in industrial settings. After an intense period of project planning and scheduling, it is quite normal to jump straight to implementation on the photovoltaic plant. Maintenance and monitoring generally have to be organized and carried out by the operator.
Thermal power stations already have a comprehensive catalog of maintenance guidelines, with corresponding sets of rules. The project team is currently working on comparable standard processes for tasks such as the “Maintenance”, “Remote maintenance”, and “Technical monitoring” of photovoltaic equipment.
Once these services have been mapped out and documented, they well be transferred into eCl@ss standards and made available to the whole sector for improving electronic data exchange. The starting point of the study is to identify the typical formats of equipment used and resulting dependencies and limiting effects these may have on individual tasks. Practical considerations will be just as important as the theory in this respect. For example, data might have to be stored for a long time – up to 20 years. Also, processes will have to account for changes in legal requirements at any given time. The eBusInstand project draws to a close at the end of 2010. Top-line results and information on the project are available on the internet.
Sebastian Dürr
Steinbeis Consulting Center Development Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency (Wolpertshausen)
Victor Thamburaj
iPlon (Schwäbisch Hall)
victor.thamburaj@iplon.de
Dr. Peter Weiß
Forschungszentrum Informatik (Karlsruhe)