April 11, 2023
Commercial Solar O&M with Simmons Knife and Continental Energy Solutions; EP137
Welcome to the Clean Power Hour, where we dive into the world of operations and maintenance (O&M) for commercial solar.
Today on the Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague is joined by Josh Richardson, Head of the O&M at Continental Energy Solutions and Colin Murphy, CEO of Simmons Knife & Saw in the Chicago suburbs. Simmons Knife installed a 437 kW rooftop solar project in 2019 that produces 70% of the facility’s power on their Glendale Heights factory headquarters. Simmons produces saw blades for the food and furniture industries. The project was designed and installed by Continental Energy Solutions (CES), the largest solar installer in Northern Illinois; an IBEW solar contractor and full-service EPC. The project was part of the first wave of FEJA (Future Energy Jobs Act) projects that are helping the state of Illinois achieve their 40% RPS by 2040. As the owner, Simmons Knife, engaged CES to perform regular O&M on the project. We got Colin and Josh together to discuss how the project has performed for the past three years.
On this Episode, Josh and Colin join Tim Montague to explore the essential components of an effective solar O&M strategy, from performance monitoring and regular inspections to preventative maintenance and repair. As Colin Murphy points out, when you own a solar array you want someone with real expertise to give it some regular TLC and make sure it’s running smoothly. Unless solar is your core business, you just want that peace of mind that the array is going to keep producing clean electrons day in and day out without any major disruptions.
Fortunately, CES uses high quality solar equipment like Trina Solar solar modules, CPS America inverters, and DCE racking. The project has experienced very few hiccups and no major equipment problems. An electrical breaker replacement is about the only thing that has been replaced so far on the five degree tilt system that is a sight to behold from the air.
Our guests will share their experiences and insights on what it takes to keep a commercial/industrial solar project running smoothly and the benefits it can bring to your business. Whether you're a property owner, a solar professional, or just curious about the possibilities for clean energy, this episode is a must-watch. So, join us on the Clean Power Hour and discover the secrets to maximizing the potential
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The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chin power systems.com. To find out more.
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It's an important and relatively complex system and you spend a lot of money on it. So it makes sense to maintain it. And I have some really good maintenance guys on my staff and they wouldn't have any idea how to maintain the solar arrays. So it's important that you have the right people needing to make for it. And when you look at the whole investment and look the the money savings you get from that system, having the OEM agreement is kind of a no brainer, I think,
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Today on the Clean Power Hour CNI, solar. Oh nm, I'm so pleased to have my customer, Colin Murphy. And my old colleague, Josh Richardson on the show today geeking out on what it takes to keep your commercial industrial solar project running smoothly. So first, I want to welcome Colin he is the CEO of Simmons knife in the Chicago suburbs. Welcome to the Clean Power Hour calm.
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Thanks, Jim.
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Great to be here. As always,
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we did a, you know a nice interview for the show a couple years ago, you installed a proximately 450 KW solar project on your roof. And you reroofed at the same time, which is a very good thing. You want to have a new roof if you can.
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But what is your experience been just in the last couple of years since you got the solar? Just give her give our listeners a high level, this is what it's been like to have a solar array?
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Sure.
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Well, overall, I'll say very positive. So it's definitely meeting my expectations. So that's the headline number, I guess is that it's going very, very well, it's generating energy in line with our expectations were. So all that part is great. I'd say in terms of the operations and maintenance side of things.
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We're a manufacturer, and we have a lot of expensive equipment in our facility that we need to maintain on a regular basis. And I look at our solar array as just another important piece of equipment that we have here at seminars that we need to keep an eye on and make sure we're maintaining. And we do that a couple of ways. We have our our agreement, annual agreement with continental energy solutions, where they're providing that that annual maintenance for us, and they'll do a I'm sure Josh would speak to in more detail, but do a very thorough review of the system on annual basis. And, you know, whatever might come up, there'll be a punch list of things that might need to get taken care of a lot of them are just taken care of on the spot. So that's something we do on the formal side of things. And the informal side of things. We also have the also energy dashboard, which is very nice, just open a web browser, and we can go there even on my smartphone, go there and see how the array is performing and see if there's any any glitches and if something doesn't look right.
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And if ever that happens, I just throw a call or an email into a continental and they jump on it right away. But that's very rare. But it is known as a large system and some complexities to it. So things little things are gonna go wrong here and there.
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But that's like any other machine that we have, right? So by and large, has been very smooth and very kind of not top of mind. It's kind of just up there working. And that's what we need to focus on on a constant basis.
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Yeah, we have an expression set it and forget it.
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And rooftop solar largely is that. But you do want to do regular maintenance. They do want to do regular monitoring.
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I'm glad you mentioned also energy the monitoring system. So Josh, Josh is the head of the lnM division at continental energy solutions, the largest commercial EPC in Northern Illinois. Welcome to the show Josh and give our listeners a little background on yourself and what your group does.
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Hey, thanks for having us. And, yeah, our own kind of span one's quite quite a few different scope items, you know, we do everything from QA QC, third party inspections, all the way to vegetation management. And, you know, we remove trees from that have fallen under Properties, we, we do everything and anything in between on the maintenance side, but it all kind of starts with at the, at the installation, doing the QA QC, doing a quality assessment of our own installations, as well as other installers in the area. And I'll say that the Illinois market here is kind of opened up for a lot of different you know, startup companies performing different levels of installations, different size systems with all types of equipment. So we pride ourselves in our exposure to pretty much anything and everything that's in the marketplace, we've we've touched, repaired, inspected, and maintained. So, you know, like we, drone flights, we have an engineering group, we do performance modelling, we just we really run the gamut of potentially anything and everything, solar related and ESS as well. With Collins system, you know, we it was a continental design and build and they started off the beginning with great equipment choices, which, you know, we find to be a pretty significant impact on the longevity and reliability of the system. You know, from the racking was a DCE system to the inverters are Chien power systems. And as Colin mentioned, the also energy, the data acquisition system there helps us keep an eye on everything, and make sure that everything is operating normally. You know, that being said, I'll say that, you know, the Oh nm group did the QA QC on Collins roof, I'll say, you know, we, we pride ourselves on the installation side, our punch lists are pretty small, we didn't find a lot of things, but we don't hold back punches, even on our own installations, we're pretty aggressive with our inspections, because we know that how it goes in is going to be how it how it runs. So we know that, you know, we're not in there with dental mirrors, but nearly you know, basically, we're looking at every termination, every torque mark, every, you know, point of connection is inspected on our, on our quality assessment on ours, and on third parties. And I'll say that, you know, continental has had a lot of experience, I did say that, you know, we do find items here and there on our own installations.
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But, you know, we can't stress enough that if if you're using if you're trying to save money and go with a bottom dollar installation, those QA QC s are even are more critical to make sure your installation is going to sit there reliably. And I'll stress safely because, you know, there's more and more concern, just because that system is sitting above your roof, it doesn't mean you know, what's really going on up there. And so colin has wisely, you know, brought us in to do annual inspections to make sure everything was tight, everything is running within normal temperatures and performing optimally. You know, it is a safety aspect. It's also a financial aspect, it's a calculation that the system remain up and running to an Illinois to get your incentives don't in the current programme, you have an obligation to produce a set amount that's expected and you're compensated for that. And if you're not producing that, then you're not generating that revenue, and that can cause issues down the line. So
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let me stop. Let me stop you there. Colin, you know, solar is a big investment, and the promises that it is going to pay back in Illinois because of the incentives we have. And because of the it's a both in state and federal incentives. But basically, you're looking at being cash positive in the five to seven year range on a solar array in Illinois, how has the project met your expectations, and if you could talk a little bit about how the executive team thought about this on the front end?
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Sure. So the first part of it, the project is directly in line with expectations. And that's not only from the amount of energy it produces, but then subsequently the amount of money we're saving on our monthly utility charges. And then last but not least was the tax incentive side of things as well as the the quarterly rebates that we get from the state of Illinois. So, all those aspects, really, there are no surprises at all. So we went in with very good estimates from from continental and those estimates are proving out to be true in terms of how we analyse this, you know, we we analyse like with any other large investment, whether it's a you know, we're we make industrial sawblades so whether it's a new machine to make new kinds of sabweb we look at it the same way Looking at the solar array, granted, this isn't gonna help us generate any more sales, but it is going to help us save a lot of money. And there's also the very altruistic art of being good citizens of planet Earth, right? Where we try, we strive to be very green company. And this is kind of putting money where our mouth is, so to speak. So it was nice that doing the right thing also coincided with being able to get a payback in a reasonable amount of time. I think everybody can say they want to do the right thing for planet Earth, but if the payback is 35 or 40 years, they might have a hard time swallowing that pill that payback six or seven years So fortunately, we are on track to the payback in that six or seven year timeframe.
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The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75. pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chin power systems.com To find out more.
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And in the case of a solar project, you know, one of the keys to the ROI is the fact that it produces kWh that reduces your power bill. And in Illinois produces recs, renewable energy credits, which are a cash incentive that come back to the owner. We're paying out 15 years of RECs over five years initially. Now that has changed to seven years with the new CG legislation of 2022. So when you when you think about the project, now it's been installed for what about three years?
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Three or four years? Looking back, did Simmons have any surprises? You mentioned that the project has been producing energy as expected, that's great. You know, when the solar array is down, not producing, you're not saving money. And so that's the reason you really want to keep the solar array running. Have there been times when the solar wasn't functioning?
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Yes, but very briefly, we had a, an issue with one of our breakers that I'm sure Josh can speak, much more talented about than I can. But again, whenever there's been an issue of that nature, we get in touch with continental and we get a lot of high priority, and it's resolved as quickly as possible. I think in that instance, we had to wait a couple of days for the actual breaker to come in from out of state or something. But it wasn't like we were down for weeks or anything like that it was just measured in a few days.
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That was the most catastrophic, if you will. And so it wasn't that catastrophic. issue we had other times it's maybe there's we have six in version, I believe. And maybe it's an issue with one of the inverters. And so one six of your power generation is down for a short period of time, in that instance, but those are also very, very few and far between and they're resolved. Very quickly.
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Excellent. Well, what is your perspective? Josh on? Well, first of all, I guess, what is the what is the Oh nm package that you're delivering on a regular basis to Semmens to make sure the project is is staying in tip top shape? And then what are what are the what are the interventions that you've done in the last couple of years?
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Yeah, so Simmons has signed on, for preventative maintenance inspection, manual one, and then reactive services calling. If they look at the monitoring through also energy, and if they see an alert or anything suspicious, they have us take a look, we do have access to their also energy portal, and can do evaluations on most of the components in the system. So we can evaluate and then even before even doing a truck roll, see if we can work with the inverter manufacturer, whoever the point of failure is that whoever the manufacturer is we can work with them. And because a lot of them, you know, everything is communication now and data. So they a lot of things they can evaluate remotely and determine if it's something up parameter change that can be you know, done remotely at no cost saving a truck roll, or, you know, we might need to go to site to evaluate. In the few instances that colin has seen, you know, as he as he alluded to one was a breaker issue. We do have, you know, a lot of vendors that we have relationships with, it is all about lead times and in the past couple of years through the pandemic, obviously, there were some slowdown of material, you know, sourcing material and acquiring that. So I think that's what impacted the few days that he mentioned. But even then, when you have a large vendor network and a large relate, you know, relationship with all the manufacturers that you're installing that that turnaround time becomes very Rick, and we have technicians that are, like I said, touching every piece of equipment in the industry right now. So we can dispatch any one of them throughout the Midwest, and get the system back up and running pretty quickly. So we do, you know, reactive services is just part of it. But that annual maintenance can't be understated. You know, I have a lot of faith in the installation itself, but nobody, well, we're all aware of this time of year, we are thinking about the thermal expansion and contraction of, of the equipment that's out there. But even buildings shift and move with with the temperature changes.
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And then when you have a building moving underneath all the solar equipment, the solar equipment is shifting a little bit as well and can cause loosening up some hardware. So it's important to at least once a year, get on site and do an inspection and we look at it's almost like during our QA QC, we're doing another QA QC, looking at all the hardware we spot check the, you know, the racking hardware, we take thermal images of all the electrical terminations, you know, we make sure that everything's communicating correctly, all the parameters are said, it's a very long list of of items. We think that that thoroughness, make sure that you just you don't have to think about it on your roof for the rest of the year. And hopefully, those savings, you know that the cost of having these inspections is proven through on the on maintaining that production, it's like a, it's kind of a no brainer in our minds, but we're also in the business of doing it. So
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a couple of a couple of questions that people typically ask about rooftop solar, do the panel's need to be cleaned on a regular basis, Josh,
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I would say, it's actually before we had this conversation, I was looking back at our panel, our past few inspections at Simmons. And the biggest thing was, there were some bird droppings and a little bit of dirt on the edges where rain and snow will wash any dirt accumulation for the most part towards the edges of the modules. And so across time, it can accumulate a little bit for the most part, you don't need to actively wash the systems, as you can imagine, I mean, even even our houses, you know, your siding, and after 10 years is gonna look a little dingy and old and could probably use a washing but the biggest impact we see is when facilities are located next to something that's producing more than a normal amount of soiling, cement processors, a lot of the rural solar farms, like in the background here and on your screen, you know, there's agricultural around them that twice a year, they're they're ploughing in the spring and harvesting in the fall and all of that picking up sediment for the most part, it gets washed off, but you can't have accumulation it's a it's a side by side, but it's not something that then any any one system needs to worry about unless they know that you know, there's that heavier potential,
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and have there been any instances of equipment having to be replaced, like inverters or solar panels.
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Um, it's not uncommon, I'll say that the solar panels themselves are, you know, rated for high impact of hail and other other objects. In the Chicago area, we have, you know, things that are especially in the city coming down from the sky that are impacted, like impact objects, so we do see occasional module replacements, but for the most part, it's a non issue, we do see inverter equipment and you know, you have electrical, the breakers and, and other other components will fail. But under manufacturer warranty that components the hardware itself is replaced. You do have to you know have there's usually a labour cost to reinstall it, condition it in the case of inverters, but for the most part, they're reliable and the inverters typically come with a 10 to 12 year warranty on them. So you know, they're your your it's pretty quiet for the most part that we see.
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So I guess what what I'm what I'm hearing from from both of you is if you buy quality equipment on the front end and work with a qualified installer, you shouldn't have a lot of problems with your solar project. Are there are there things Colin that have come up for Simmons that we haven't talked about or anything that you want to share with other facility owners who might be looking at this video or the audio and, you know, solar is largely a little understood, let's say in the Midwest, still, right? People don't see it that much. Still, of course on the CNI side, it's 30 feet in the air. And it's invisible to the naked eye unless you're looking at Google Earth. And you can see someone's knife solar array on Google, Google Maps now, so just Google Simmons knife in the suburbs of Chicago and you'll find it but anything you want to share to other CNI owners.
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Probably just go A lot of what Josh has said that, I mean, it's an important and relatively complex system, he spent a lot of money on it.
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So it makes sense to maintain it. And I have some really good maintenance guys on my staff and they would have any idea how to maintain a solar array. So it's important that you have the right people doing the maintenance for it. And when you look at the whole investment, and what the the money, the savings you get from that system, having the OEM agreement is kind of a no brainer, I think. And I will say that we get our money's worth out of it when when chasis maveo. They're up on that roof for many, many, many hours during the annual visit. And we get a very lengthy, very comprehensive report about how the system is working and any issues that they may have found so it's kind of a no brainer, and it's just just a way to protect your investment and make it last as long as possible.
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Yeah, just like we changed the oil on our cars. You you want to give your your solar array an annual inspection. I think we'll say thank you so much, Colin Murphy let you move on with your day. I'm Tim Montague. Check out all of our content at clean power hour.com Please give us a rating and review. And let's grow solar.
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Thank you, Colin. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America. The maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over six gigawatts shipped in the US the CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions go to cin power systems.com To find out more
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