Lodestar Energy uses Power Factors' Asset Oversight and Invoice Management applications to scale its portfolio and optimize O&M

Lodestar Energy is a solar development company operating in the Northeastern United States that develops, finances, owns, and manages solar assets long term. Their current portfolio is managed with Power Factors' Asset Oversight and Invoice Management applications^* and consists of over 100 MW across 40 solar projects.

Asset management challenges

Lodestar Energy first realized the need for Power Factors' Asset Oversight and Invoice Management applications as their solar portfolio and asset management team grew. As they added more projects across different regulatory programs, they quickly realized that Excel was not an adequate tool for scaling their business. Lodestar Energy wanted to avoid costly breakdowns and take preventative maintenance measures. They required a secure and central platform that could manage their administrative work, track regulatory requirements, and consolidate their monitoring system data.

“We make economic decisions about our solar assets based on a data-driven approach and [the Asset Oversight and Invoice Management applications] have allowed us to truly understand the value of our assets and the financial impact of each decision we make,” says Jaime A. Smith, co-founder of Lodestar Energy. “The products help us daily to optimize our asset management creating a positive ROI.”

Solution: Asset Oversight and Invoice Management

Lodestar Energy chose Power Factors' Asset Oversight and Invoice Management, two secure cloud-based solutions, to address their asset management challenges. It gave them the tools needed to achieve their lean philosophy and maximize their return on investment. Asset Oversight and Invoice Management help Lodestar Energy scale their portfolio and optimize O&M. Using the applications' flexible tools, the company is able to structure their data, performance monitoring, and maintenance planning to their needs, exposing the cost of their decisions and achieving better lifecycle tracking.

“Before [Asset Oversight and Invoice Management] we didn’t treat communications outages as a huge deal. Our attitude was – we will get around to it next time a provider is on site. With [Asset Oversight and Invoice Management], we understand the breadth of underlying issues that can be masked by communication outages and started taking action immediately. As a result of our prioritized response we’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars.”

Results

With Asset Oversight and Invoice Management, Lodestar Energy has saved tens of thousands of dollars and several administrative hours per day. These applications are used to manage day-to-day operations and make smarter economic decisions. Using the applications' Performance module the company no longer has to wait for their monthly performance report to make data-driven decisions.

^*Previously known as BluePoint. To learn more about our rebranding and the unification of industry-leading solutions under the Unity Renewable Energy Management Suite (REMS), read our blog post highlighting these changes.

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