Summit 2020

Renewable energy is very geographically dispersed – wind blows in certain areas of the country and not in others so you’ll find wind turbines in many remote and scattered locations. Similar challenges arise with solar and sun patterns can vary from one part of the country to another. In most cases, people don’t live near renewable energy sources, wind is more common but solar tends to be much more remote leading to an increased need for remote computing, cloud computing and the SaaS model. In these remote locations, remote connectivity is a must.

Speed is a key advantage when dealing with renewable energy – with companies going through massive transitions and quickly buying and selling these assets, some organizations need a mere 90 days to set up and take over an asset and cloud computing allows for a much easier transition.
Another key benefit of cloud computing within the renewable energy space is the significantly reduced cost of managing these assets – cloud computing allows for a more streamlined management process without too much overhead or lengthy and costly maintenance needs.

Lessons learned
Primarily it’s about training the end-users. New assets oftentimes require new people. People who haven’t used the systems before need to be trained on how to maximize the system and how it will benefit them and their overall department.

What’s Next
IoT – wind and solar renewables lend themselves to IoT as well. All the assets have the ability to communicate and have connections capable of telling you info about their condition which makes remote management and lends itself to a lot of efficiencies by collecting data remotely and aggregating it into a consistent plan to assist with managing.