India

O&M is a segment of great importance for the solar industry in India, which is home to one of the largest fleets of solar PV plants worldwide. As power plants age, the industry has realised that proper “health care” is indispensable for power plants to meet performance expectations. Today, O&M has become a standalone segment in the solar value chain in India with an increasing number of companies specialising exclusively in solar O&M. Yet there are still significant quality discrepancies between services provided by different O&M providers.

To address these challenges, NSEFI and SolarPower Europe, supported by IGEF, joined forces to develop the India edition of the O&M Best Practice Guidelines. Our joint O&M Task Force was launched in March 2020 in New Delhi, assembling more than 40 leading solar experts from India and Europe. The kick-off meeting was followed by a series of online working meetings, in which we fine-tuned Version 4.0 of SolarPower Europe’s O&M Best Practice Guidelines in order to reflect Indian market conditions and regulatory requirements. The result is a guidance that we hope will help Indian solar stakeholders to increase quality in the O&M segment. 

This document is aimed at O&M service providers, as well as other parties involved in the operation of solar power plants, such as owners and investors, lenders, technical advisors and data-related service providers. It will help to establish common standards and increase transparency in the sector. It is also worth noting that solar O&M is a particularly value intensive segment that supports a lot of local jobs, and drives important solar innovations notably in the field of digitalisation.

NSEFI and SolarPower Europe would like to thank the Indo-German Energy Forum for their continued support that made these Guidelines possible.