Utility-scale Solar Power II: Digitalization in PV Power Plants - Enhancing O&M through Digital Twinning, Data and Process Integration

Atse Louwen is a Senior Researcher at Eurac Research, Institute for Renewable Energy. His main research interests include the performance and reliability of Photovoltaics (PV), modelling and machine learning of PV performance and solar irradiance, and the sustainability of PV. He is team leader in Performance, Reliability and Sustainability of PV. Currently, he is involved in the numerous European projects. In Horizon Europe projects NEXUS and PILATUS, he is leading the evaluation of performance and reliability in outdoor testing and contributing to the assessment of sustainability and economics of novel and existing PV technologies. In MC2.0 Atse is coordinating the sustainability assessment of integrated PV products. In the Horizon 2020 project TRUST-PV he analysed the long-term performance of a large fleet of PV systems and is contributing to the ongoing digitalization of the PV sector along the value chain. Before joining Eurac, Atse worked at Utrecht University's Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, where he attained his PhD performing multi-disciplinary assessment of PV technology, including Lifecycle Assessment and performance analysis1. As a Post-Doc at the Copernicus Institute, Atse was a work package leader in the EU H2020 project REFLEX, examining technological learning and experience curves for a variety of renewable energy technologies.

Dr.-Ing. Björn Müller has been Managing Director of Enmova GmbH since 2021. Mr. Müller studied economics at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg from 1991 to 1998 and graduated with a degree in business administration. From 2004 to 2006, he studied energy management at the University of Koblenz-Landau and graduated with a Master of Science. In 2018, the University of Kassel awarded him the title of Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.). Mr. Müller worked for a large international auditing company in Freiburg from 2000 to 2005. After working as an independent consultant for 2 years, he held various positions at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg from 2007 to 2021. His last position there was as group leader of the "Photovoltaic Power Plants" group. In 2021, he founded Enmova GmbH from Fraunhofer ISE. Mr. Müller has many years of experience in business and technical issues relating to the planning, construction and operation of PV power plants. He also has in-depth knowledge in the field of energy meteorology and climatology.

Since 2021, Christian Schill is group manager of 'Photovoltaic Power Plants' at Fraunhofer ISE, Germany, after stations at Freiburg Material Research Centre (FMF), PSE GmbH and the University of Freiburg. He is an alumni of the Sustainability Center Freiburg. He works in the fields of quality of PV power plants, outdoor weathering of PV modules, climate data and spatial analyses, with a focus on integrated PV and digitalization in the PV sector.

Ulrike Jahn is a graduate physicist and works as a scientific group leader in the Photovoltaic Systems and Integration department at the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP in Halle, Germany. Her work focusses on the diagnosis and reliability of PV systems. She is project manager of an international expert group, Task 13 of the PVPS programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which deals with technical and economic aspects of the reliability and performance of PV systems. She has been coordinating this network of currently 185 international experts in 25 countries since 2010.

Jonathan Leloux began his solar energy adventures in 2005 and has since worked in the field of solar photovoltaic energy as an engineer, researcher, consultant, and entrepreneur. His expertise is focused on photovoltaic (PV) system engineering, encompassing residential distributed PV and large-scale PV plants, bifacial PV, agrivoltaics, BIPV, floating PV, CPV, and solar resource assessment. He holds an Engineering Degree in Mining and Geology and a PhD in Solar Photovoltaic Energy Systems. He is a co-founder and the managing director of LuciSun, which provides technical guidance through consulting services and products to actors in the solar energy sector across all project phases, including early design, PV engineering, financing, construction, commissioning, and operation. As part of his role at LuciSun, he is actively involved in several research projects at national, European and international levels, along with other team members, ensuring that the company's initiatives are closely integrated with the latest advancements in solar technology. He participates in the IEA PVPS Programme Tasks 13 on PV System Performance and Task 15 on BIPV.

David Daßler received his M.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics from the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig). Since 2012, he has been working at Fraunhofer CSP in the field of reliability and energy yield assessment of solar modules and systems. 2015 - 2021: Scientist with a focus on energy yield evaluation and modelling with a special interest in Big Data, machine learning and statistics. 2021 - today: Head of team "PV System Assessment & Diagnostics" His main area of research is the application of mathematics in the field of photovoltaics, the requirements for data quality of monitoring data, the detectability of defects as well as risk minimisation within portfolio analysis.

Dr Julián Ascencio-Vásquez has more than eight years of experience in the field of PV yield and O&M optimization, currently as Senior Staff Engineer at the Solar Centre of Excellence (CoE) of Envision Digital, and is an active member of the International Energy Agency - Task 13 PVPS Programme. His primary R&D activities include designing and implementing performance and risk modelling and assessment algorithms of PV systems operating worldwide. Before Envision Digital, he worked for several renewable energy companies in Chile, Belgium and France. His academic background includes a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, received in 2021, a B.Sc. in Civil Electrical Engineering from the P. Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile, M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Sustainable Development from the ESIEE-Amiens, France, and M.Sc. in Automated Systems Engineering from the University of Picardie Jules Verne, France. He is the first author and contributor of over 30 scientific articles and reports and a participant and speaker at the most prestigious solar R&D international conferences.