Solution Brief: Field Service Management

Volume

Whereas a traditional 250 MW gas-fired plant may have 1 or 2 centralized generators, a wind farm may have hundreds of distributed generators and a single solar farm up to a million generators. The amount of data and number of assets to manage can be overwhelming for small, often remote staff.

Velocity

Traditional power generation does not onboard many new plants – one or two a year would be above average. On the other hand, it is common for solar asset owners to onboard hundreds of new facilities per year. Managing on-take of new plants using labor-intensive IT staffs and tools is costly.

Budget

Solar and wind power O&M budgets are 25 to 50% of traditional energy asset projects on a $/MW basis, yet renewable energy operators have the same responsibilities and manage many more, highly distributed plants and assets.

With labor costs rising, how can renewable energy owners manage more plants, at a faster onboarding rate, with a smaller budget? Owners and operators are looking to modern technology not only to monitor operational status but to reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary and ineffective truckrolls while ensuring safety and improving asset performance.

Field Service Management

Power Factors’ Field Service Management (FSM) module is an asset-centric, contract-aware maintenance management system fully integrated with Drive’s Data & Events platform. Drive’s Data & Events Engines and FSM combine to automatically connect operational events with work order information including maintenance history, resource management, parts inventory and compliance/contractual requirements for each asset.

Built on the Salesforce platform, FSM leverages Salesforce to store and classify information including contract requirements, resource management (people), costs and parts. In Drive, operators use data and events to identify issues at the plant and asset levels. When Drive is integrated with FSM, operators generate an “event-aware” work order for the specific asset within the Drive environment. As a result, dispatchers and managers using FSM receive the work order and immediately have asset and work order information needed to prioritize dispatch according to available resources and inventory as well as effects on production and safety.

As work is carried out, work order records are stored and available for compliance and reporting. Work order records include time spent on work, excusability categorization and response time tracking.

Power Factors Drive is purpose-designed so operators can manage:

• Work orders and technician dispatch
• Planning & scheduling
• Storerooms, spare parts and inventory management
• Contractual Compliance
• Reports, dashboards and KPIs

Automated workflow and failure categorization help increase asset life and productivity while streamlining O&M processes. FSM links causes (events) and effects (work orders) to uncover equipment performance problems and improve system availability.

Field Service Management Benefits

The Power Factors FSM module is designed to:

1. Equip Operators with tools designed for modern renewable operations.

As portfolios continue to scale, operators are working to reduce truck rolls across a diverse and geographically distributed set of assets. To be successful, central planners and schedulers need to connect a complex set of logistical tasks, including work order planning, job kitting, identification of qualified and available crafts and optimized routing. Power Factors FSM provides tools for each of these tasks including a visual display to identify where workers are, what they are working on and the status of their work.

2. Improve workforce efficiency.

To transform renewable power field service maintenance from a labor-intensive set of manual tasks to a set of coordinated and efficient tasks, Power Factors FSM changes the paradigm by making tasks “exception-based.” Instead of relying on calendar-based schedules, common tasks like compliance and maintenance are performed on an as-needed basis. FSM tells you where your equipment problems are, and when and where you are out-of-compliance so you can focus on what matters.

3. Reduce levelized cost of production.

Reducing labor costs is critical to lowering your portfolio LCOE. Power Factors FSM module uses workflow automation to lower maintenance and production costs and preserve project cash flows.

Feature	Function
Work Orders	Manage fed work with a complete work management system that includes corrective and preventive maintenance work orders.
Standard Work Tasks	Includes a complete library of over 200 standard solar and wind field service work tasks. Creating a work order is a simple task of assembling standard tasks that are pre-qualified and consistent.
Event Notification	Sends alert via email to users subscribed for specific events.
Dashboards & Reporting	Calculates KPIs and displays role-based dashboards. Includes over 40 standard work management, compliance reports and a built-in report wizard to develop self-service reports.
Storerooms & Inventory Management	Create physical, mobile and virtual storerooms for part assignment and to track ownership. Complete inventory management system including inter and intra-storeroom transfer tracking.
Planning & Scheduling	Plan and schedule field service work orders using the visual Dispatch Console Display to drag-and drop work assignments to available workers & time slots.
Commercial Compliance	Track both calendar-based and event-based commercial obligations. Assign responsibility for compliance and track with automated reports and dashboards.
Asset Registry	Complete asset registry for every asset in the facility down to the module and gearbox levels. Track equipment history, warranty claims and component reliability metrics.
Cost Tracking	Capture labor, materials and miscellaneous costs on each work order and easily compile into customer invoice within the FSM or your financial management system.

Summary

Today’s renewable energy asset owners and operators are looking to find ways to drive ever-higher efficiencies as they operate and maintain large-scale portfolios. Old methods and tools are not able to scale to meet the challenges that the volume and velocity of today’s modern portfolios are presenting.

Power Factors FSM delivers modern, cloud-based software that has been designed to work with the demands of today’s renewable energy portfolios. The FSM module is tightly integrated with operations data and is designed to be asset-aware, event-aware and commercially-aware to streamline processes and foster collaboration.

FSM connects operational intelligence with workflow automation, so renewable owners and operators can continue to scale while improving performance and reducing unnecessary overhead.

For More Information

To learn more about how the Power Factors asset performance management platform works, please contact sales@pfdrive.com or visit www.pfdrive.com