SCADA International aspires to lower the cost of green energy with their new Solar PV Data Tag-List

As increasing numbers of solar PV plants continue to emerge in the renewable landscape worldwide, new challenges concerning data access and communication protocols appear.

Today, many plant owners deal with numerous different solar PV setups, including various communication protocols and technologies. Handling data from different sources impedes major technical difficulties as well as maintenance costs. The so-called "80/20 rule" still stands in most companies, where 80% of data experts’ time and resources are spent cleaning and organizing data, and only 20% are left for analysis. Thus, many recognize the need for one data standard and a uniform naming convention to optimize data analysis and improve the reliability of plant operations.

SCADA International’s new Solar PV Data Tag-List has been established to support a cooperative data exchange environment within the solar PV industry. Based on the IEC 61850-7-4 and IEC 61850-7-420 standards, the Solar PV Data Tag-List normalizes the data by transforming various data into one standard data set. This ensures simple data comparison and paves the way for easy adaptability and scalability.

"We believe that the new Solar PV Data Tag-List provides better conditions for reducing errors and lowering the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). At the end of the day, comparing apples to apples is far easier and more efficient than comparing apples to bananas," says Thomas Bagger, CEO at SCADA International.

In order to promote data uniformity across systems, SCADA International has made the Solar PV Data Tag-List available for everyone to use and integrate into their system.

Build on industry needs and SCADA expertise

The Solar PV Data Tag-List consists of 299 tag-names, which adds to the 2673 tag-names of the existing Global Wind Data Tag-List, published by SCADA International in 2019.

The Global Wind Data Tag-List constitutes the first data standardization for wind turbines within the wind industry, and the demand and development within renewables have encouraged SCADA International to provide a corresponding data standardization for solar PV plants.

With the new addition, SCADA International follows the movement towards more diversification in the renewable energy sector by promoting data standardization and interoperability, not only in the wind industry, but in the renewable industry as a whole. 

"Our goal is to empower a renewable and greener future, so enabling our customers and other stakeholders in the solar PV industry to utilize their data in the best possible way is a huge step in the right direction," says Thomas Bagger.

The Solar PV Data Tag-List will continuously be updated as more tags are added. Additionally, the list is accessible to everyone and can be downloaded here.