Exploring large scale solar with Scatec Solar
Scatec leading the way
Digitisation and Efficiency
A great advantage of the PV and renewable energy industry is that it isn’t hindered by legacy technology, and that this technology can actually be designed for using digital tools and taking a data-driven approach.
Joel Kruger, Operations Analyst, GOC, Scatec.
From Control and Monitoring to Operations
Scatec’s Control and Monitoring Centre (CMC) in Cape Town has officially been rebranded as the Global Operations Centre (GOC), a name which better covers its current function and vision.
Jaco de Jager, Head of GOC, explains, ‘’While monitoring remains at the core of what the GOC does, the GOC now goes beyond traditional plant monitoring, focusing on data quality, production analysis, forecasting, and more. As the eyes and ears of the company, we play a key role in helping our site teams achieve peak performance by leveraging our global scale. To upscale and to meet the required KPIs, the only way that it can be done is through data-driven decision making.’’
Digitalisation, Optimisation and Automation
Established in 2018, Scatec’s operational portfolio was around 325 MWp across 12 plants, mainly in South Africa, growing by 2024, nearly 10x to over 3,000 MWp (3 GWp) across solar, wind, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) worldwide.
Digitalisation is an extremely important part of the Global Operations Centre. With each power plant having hundreds of thousands, some of them even millions of signals being processed and measured every single second, digitalisation, optimisation and automation allows a single person to monitor up to 1000 megawatts at a time.
Centralisisation and Cost Efficiency
With the ability to monitor data in real-time, SCADA systems can store data for longer-term analyses. The Global Operations Centre reduces costs while maintaining the incredibly high availability factor that is required in Scatec, meaning that increasing the plant size does not necessarily increase the costs. Because everything is centralised in the GOC, it makes data acquisition and data analysis easy, helping the team have easy access to remote sites globally.
Global Oversight 24/7, 365.
Having an eye on the plants globally, the GOC team is the first to identify issues, providing 24/7, 365 oversight to all the plants across the entire global portfolio of Scatec. The GOC runs regular reviews of all the plants in the portfolio to also pick up broader trends and production-affecting issues such as soiling, and recommends improvement initiatives to the site teams.
With a growing need for accurate day-ahead and intra-day forecasts, the GOC plays a critical role in optimising production forecasts, preventing inaccurate forecasting which could have potentially resulted in a reduction of the revenues for these projects.
The Future of the GOC
The GOC will continue to work closely with the O&M Analytics team to identify and act on production improvement opportunities across the global network. This transformation is an exciting milestone in Scatec’s journey in leading the charge in renewable energy across the globe.
Jaco de Jager GOC Manager Scatec in Cape Town, Photo Scatec
