Do you struggle to pull actionable insights from the tangle of data coming from your renewable assets? If so, you may be experiencing “spaghetti syndrome.” What’s that?! Can it be cured? Magnus Henriksson, Chief Customer Officer at Power Factors, explains.  

IS SPAGHETTI SYNDROME HURTING YOUR RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS?

By Magnus Henriksson, Chief Customer Officer at Power Factors

SPAGHETTI SURPRISE 

Imagine: You’re at a café overlooking the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside. You take a sip of red wine made from grapes grown at a nearby vineyard. A server walks over and places a bowl of freshly made spaghetti in front of you. This is the life. You lift your fork to dig in… 

But wait. The tangle of noodles appears to be growing. Spaghetti spills over the sides of the bowl and onto your lap. You look more closely… 

They aren’t noodles at all. They’re strings of numbers. And they’re multiplying rapidly!  

Panicked, you turn to the server. “Oh, that’s the data coming from your renewable energy plants,” he says calmly, picking up some strings of data and plopping them back in your bowl. “Please review and let me know which plants are underperforming and your plan to address the root causes of underperformance.” 

What?! But if you’re a renewable energy owner, operator, or asset manager, this scenario might feel nightmarishly familiar. 

In a perfect world, you’d have tools to sort through all the data coming from your assets. These tools would tell you how well your projects are performing and alert you to causes of underperformance so you can act to address the issues most hurting revenue.  

But in the real world, you’re often left scrambling to a untangle an overwhelming mess of data coming from your assets — with no clear idea of what’s important to plant profitability and what’s just noise. 

This is what we not-so-fondly call spaghetti syndrome: You have the data (somewhere…), but the information you need is tangled up with a lot of misleading and non-essential data. 

HOW’D WE GET INTO THIS MESS? 

As the renewables industry matures, the data coming from your assets only gets more complex and harder to stay on top of.  

Understanding the data from one project is tough enough. But it’s become increasingly common for companies in renewable energy to own, operate, and/or manage large and diverse portfolios composed of a mix of wind, solar, energy storage, and hydro assets.  

And, more often than not, these plants are made up of assorted hardware from various original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This not only means a lot of different data streams, it also often means dealing with multiple software systems. 

Collecting and interpreting all this data is a daunting task. It can take weeks or months — or longer — to identify trends or discover root causes, often forcing a reactive approach to maintenance and performance optimization. 

But what if you did have the tools you needed to tackle “spaghetti syndrome”? Tools to help you befriend your data and use its insights to help you find and fix performance issues faster?  

That’s where Power Factors comes in.  

TOOLS FOR DATA-DETANGLING  

Power Factors’ products — Drive, Drive Pro, Greenbyte, and BluePoint — are designed with spaghetti syndrome sufferers in mind. Because we’ve been in your shoes!  

So we decided to dedicate ourselves to building some serious data-detangling solutions to help combat spaghetti syndrome for good. Our tools pull the data from all your assets — no matter the asset type or OEM — into one place and give you the information you need to run your plants more successfully. 

Spend less time disentangling mounds of data and more time tackling issues head-on. Don’t know where to start? We get it and we’re here to help. Get in touch!