Digitalisation a 'huge opportunity for the industry'

The report seeks to lay out how solar can make the most from market opportunities arising from digitalisation, such as smart solar homes, peer-to-peer electricity trading and high-tech O&M.

SolarPower Europe member and report contributor BayWa r.e., is at the forefront of this exciting digital transitions in a number of key areas across its business. Included in the report is BayWa r.e.’s involvement in the European Union’s Solar Train project and utilisation of drones for aerial infrared thermal imaging analysis for its operation services business.

Tobias Bittkau, Managing Director of BayWa r.e. Operation Services GmbH, comments: “As a longstanding member of SolarPower Europe, we are pleased to support this new report which brings together the latest thinking on a hugely exciting topic."

“Digital transformation represents a huge opportunity for our customers and our business. Through it, we will be able to increase process efficiency and quality as well as offer new IT and data related services. BayWa r.e. has developed a clear roadmap for digital transformation, which will allow us to implement the necessary steps. Our participation in the EU’s Solar Train project, aimed at combining the megatrends of renewable energy and big data, is already informing our digitalisation strategy. An early output has been the use of drones for aerial infrared thermal imaging analysis.”

The Digitalisation and Solar report also looks at new and improved business models, the digitalisation of the entire value chain from manufacturing to operations and maintenance, and digital integration of the technology into the grid.

Professor Bernd Engel, SolarPower Europe Digitalisation Task Force leader and representative of the SMA Solar Technology Board for grid integration stated: "Digitalisation is a major opportunity for solar, not least because it is a means of integrating more PV into the grid, gaining system-wide benefits and new revenues for solar installations."

The Digitalisation and Solar report is available to download from Solar Power Europe.