Asset managers turn to O&M as large-scale solar settles in for the long haul

While the future of large-scale solar power in the U.S. may be entering a period of some turbulence, it is a sure bet that existing assets will be called on to deliver every MW and dollar of their rated capacities. The key to enabling the long-term health and profitability of solar lies in effective – even proactive – operations and maintenance (O&M) services.

Will White, senior application specialist of distributed energy resources at Fluke Corp., a manufacturer of industrial testing tools and software, took time out of his global travels to discuss solar O&M with pv magazine USA. White said O&M will only increase in importance as existing assets age and that managers have to recruit and train new cadres of technicians to handle the growing burden. The interview has been edited and condensed.

pv magazine: O&M is the sort of the red-headed stepchild of the solar industry. It’s almost an afterthought. When you’re starting a project, there’s a notion that it’s solid state. Just put it up, which you can do quickly, and it’s fine.

Will White: Yes, and that is not the case. Some of this thinking comes from the push for solar on the residential side, where install-and-forget is more attractive to the consumer. And O&M on the residential scale is nothing compared to the utility scale. But when we look at how O&M has changed over the years, sure it definitely started out as, what operations and maintenance? We’ll just wash the modules every once in a while, and cut the grass and we’ll be fine.

pv magazine: That’s interesting because, I sense that we’re in a kind of “end of the gold rush” situation in terms of new large-scale development. New utility-scale projects will be scrutinized on the financials like never before. Now we have an established industry with an established generating base of solar, and while it may have been growing in capacity at a record pace recently, that might not be the case going forward.

Will White: With the current volatility that we’re seeing in the development market, even without incentive, solar is still the lowest-cost energy and the fastest to deploy to get on the grid. So, I think even with the changing financial dynamics, you’re still going to see demand.

That being said, I’ve seen over the last five to ten years that O&M is definitely in transition to be more at the forefront, especially in the development process. Developers and asset owners are taking a more proactive approach to operations and maintenance. This is mostly because they’re seeing projects – and not necessarily their own – where forecasted financial return is just not coming true because of O&M issues. The goals of owners are shifting to getting the most generation and value out of what already exists.

pv magazine: One of the things I wonder about, given the increasing importance of O&M going forward, are there enough people out there to monitor and perform these duties? As a specialist in creating O&M tools, can the solar industry attract enough of the right people to handle this growingly important O&M challenge?

Will White: Utility-scale solar assets have a design lifespan usually of 25 to 30 years. So, if I build it today, someone’s got to maintain that for the next 25 to 30 years. That’s not going away. I think there’s definite stability in the operations and maintenance of those systems as a career. It used to be back in the day that the O&M techs were usually the most experienced guys on the install side, right? Usually the electricians. They’ve been living with the equipment for a long time. They’ve done installs for years and now they move over to O &M. They get it.

But as time marches on, we need more people on the O&M side than those who might have started out in solar on the install side. Now, we’re seeing sites where literally the new O&M tech was working at McDonald’s last week. And that’s a great opportunity. I mean, these are these are good-paying, stable jobs that offer careers where there are advancement opportunities. I think that’s great for them. The challenge for O&M providers and asset owners is that you have to train and equip these people.

Fortunately, we have organizations like the Amicus O&M Cooperative, that are developing comprehensive training programs for O&M personnel. Amicus has four-level training so they start with someone who knows absolutely nothing coming off the street and can get that basic training, and then it goes up to level four for senior techs. I think that’s a good way to do it. Also, SEIA is developing standards for training O&M technicians.

pv magazine: You have experience with installations around the world. I saw your LinkedIn talking about solar projects in floodplains of Vietnam and other challenges in Southeast Asia. Even in these other places in the world, do you still see that idea that this array has to be here for the long term? It’s not just dealing with your geography in terms of placing a site. You have to deal with geography in terms of maintaining it and operating it. Is that still front and center in development in these other places? How does O&M rate as a priority in other global markets, and what are the labor situations like?

Will White: Fluke is a global corporation, so we serve almost every country in the world and definitely every region. I do have the opportunity to travel quite a bit with my role because solar is popular all around the world. And even if we see a slowdown in the U.S. in ‘26, and I think this is going to be a blip – we call it the “solar coaster” for a reason – but I think it’s going to go back pretty quickly. Solar power has its own merits that will transcend any political thoughts.

I can’t speak to the development side, but what I see on the operations and maintenance side internationally is a pretty significant difference from what we see here in the U.S. That’s mostly related to the cost of labor. The cost of labor in the U.S. is significantly higher. We typically have one dedicated O&M technician per 50 MW. I was on a 250 MW site in India and they had something like 60 O&M techs on site that day. And then there’s like another 15 vegetation management people. So just substantially more labor.

pv magazine: Picking up on what you were saying from your position as an equipment developer and supplier, and with the knowledge that in some cases people need to be able to do more with fewer warm bodies, does mean that you have to provide different tools with different requirements for O&M in different parts of the world? Not just labor-saving, but knowledge enhancing. Do you have to have different types of equipment for different markets based upon their O&M knowledge, or do you find that you can adapt existing equipment relatively easily across different regions?

Will White: I think O&M presents a similar problem throughout the world. Either you have a tight labor market and you have to recruit new people from other industries, or you have a lot of untrained people available to do the job. In either case, they don’t necessarily have the background to be effective. Training is the key issue.

In our case, it’s the local Fluke team selling into that market that is doing the training tailored to that market. That’s where my travel comes in. A lot of the time, I’m working with our local sales team, either Fluke or our distribution partners, so that they in turn can train their local teams with local nuances mixed in. That’s not necessarily on the hardware side. It’s more on the application nuances for each market and O&M tech.

Obviously, you get different voltages and frequencies in different parts of the world. But the DC side is pretty uniform. A lot of the equipment is standard across the world because a lot of it is manufactured in the same places. I see a lot of the same inverters in Southeast Asia that I see in the U.S.

pv magazine: Besides training for local nuance, what is Fluke doing to make O&M techs more effective wherever they may be? Do you have to develop different kinds of equipment to support the newcomers to the field across the board?

Will White: Fluke has been in business for over 75 years now, and anytime we’re looking at a new product, it always starts with the voice a customer. What problems are the customers having? How can we provide solutions to those problems?

A perfect example specific to the solar industry is the GFL 1500, our brand-new ground fault locator. We just released it a couple of weeks ago. It originated from listening to the problems technicians are having, and everybody it seems has trouble with ground faults. I don’t think I’ve met a single person who to whom I’ve asked, “Hey, do you have a problem with ground faults?” and didn’t roll their eyes. That’s number one; the thing that always pops up. So, we looked at that and worked on what we can we do to make it easier for technicians of all stripes to find and fix these ground faults significantly faster. Then we build a tool around that.

pv magazine: That brings up an interesting question: Are the sorts of tools that are needed for good long-term solar O&M changing given now that people are actually doing it, now that we are in the O&M era compared to the what was perhaps the earlier development era? Are the tools they thought they needed different than the tools than are actually needed and that you’re being asked to develop?

Will White: The real progression has been in DC voltage. We’re currently up to 1,500 volts. Probably going to go to 2,000 volts at some time. So, we’ve had to increase the voltage ratings of our tools and the safety ratings as well. The other thing, which we’ve discussed, is the labor issue. And this is an issue across a lot of industries, but one thing that we’ve tried to with our tools is develop workflows that are inherent in the tool that makes it easier for the technicians; not just veteran technicians but new ones as well.

One of the features of GFL-1500 is an analysis function that measures voltage and determines where in a circuit the fault would be. This is a test that senior technicians have been doing since the beginning of solar. It’s a manual test: voltage testing, and then manually calculating where in the string the fault is. The GFL 1,500, automates that, which makes it easier for technicians, especially newer technicians that don’t necessarily need to learn the math behind it because the tool does it for them.

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