SolarOS, the intelligent operation & maintenance system(Part I)

Author: Yuyao

2022-11-15 14:11

In recent years, PV power plant are rising around the world to meet the needs of energy supply and energy structure.

With the rapid development of digital technology, modern digital technology should be reasonably used in the monitoring and operation of power plants to improve the reliability of utility-scale PV power plant monitoring and efficiency of operation and maintenance. The digitalization and AI intelligence of utility-scale power plant level monitoring platform have become a trend.

SolarOS Intelligent operation and maintenance system is developed by GoodWe to meet the needs of power plant monitoring system. In SolarOS, technologies such as Internet of things communication protocol, distributed data storage, quick-service, big data technology, artificial intelligence and cloud computing are applied. To fully control the operation state of the power plant, accurately realize the goal of predictive operation and maintenance, and practice the concept of scenario-oriented design, so as to enable intelligent management and efficient operation and maintenance of the power plant.

 

Operation and maintenance requirement of large power station

Utility-scale PV power plants are characterized by large number of equipment, complex types, complex networking, large area, and few personnel on duty. Taking a 100MW photovoltaic power plant as an example, the floor area in the case of flat land will reach 2000-2500 mu (1.33km2 – 1.67km2). The large floor area also directly leads to the difficulty of inspection. The large number and large area of the equipment in power plant also lead to the huge amount of data needed to be collected and stored in the whole power plant.

With the above characteristics, when equipment failure occurs in the power plant, components appear occlusion, hidden cracks, hot spots, etc., it will inevitably affect the power generation of the power plant, thus affecting the revenue of the whole power plant. But the factors that make these situations happen are often multiple and complex. If we can make use of the huge amount of data in the whole power plant, conduct data analysis, accurately locate the location of faults, and even predict the occurrence of some faults in advance, we can greatly reduce the operation and maintenance costs, improve the power generation, and improve the efficiency of power generation. 

Therefore, there are views of every level in SolarOS, which can show the information of whole substation, it is also able to control, update the equipment and IV scan & diagnosis function, which can meet the increasing maintenance demand of large power plants.

 

SolarOS system structure

1. System structure

Picture 1 SolarOS network structure

As it can be seen from the picture 1, the SolarOS is located in substation control level. The data of the solar equipment in solar area including the weather station will be collected to the communication box SCB3000, which is connected by optical fiber ring net, and transfer all the data to switch in station control level. SolarOS will also collect information from the switch in station control level, to achieve the function of data collecting, processing and calculation work.  And the commands issued by SolarOS will be sent by this path to all equipment.

2. System structure of SolarOS in station control level

The system structure is shown in picture 2. SolarOS adopts the structure and organization of micro-service. The applications are developed as independent parts, and every application is run as a single service. Currently the system includes IV diagnosis, training service, pre-statistics service, dispersion ratio service and alarm service, five services in total. Those services are designed according to the structure of SolarOS, many services are achieved in this OS. As those services are run separately, the update, deployment and extension of those services are also separate, which is convenient for continuous upgrade of SolarOS.

Micro-services have the characteristics of autonomy and specificity. Development, deployment, operation and extension of one service will not affect other services. Every service is designed with a set of function, which is more focused on specific problems.

In addition, the SolarOS uses distributed storage technology to store data, which is more reliable, efficient and easy to expand. 

Picture 2, structure of SolarOS

3、SolarOS interface structure

The picture 3 shows the menu and sub-menu of SolarOS. It includes 10 main menus, each main menu includes independent sub-menus, the whole system operation is convenient and practicable.

 

Picture 3 interface structure of SolarOS

Please click here to read Part II of this article.