Asset life optimisation through sharing knowledge

The Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle that forms the backbone of any ISO55000 Asset Management System, promotes continually improve through the review and evaluation of an organisation’s processes, activities and failures, to determine whether any improvements can be made that will add value. Whilst the reviewing and evaluating of an organisation’s processes, activities and failures is an excellent method of continually improving, they are generally reactive measures of things that have already happened. High performing organisations typically employ proactive measures as well as reactive ones to manage their assets.

ISO55002 provides some guidance on this by saying that an ‘organisation should actively seek and acquire knowledge about new asset management related technology and practices, including new tools and techniques; …’. ISO55002 also provides a number of examples where organisations can acquire such knowledge, which includes attendance of conferences, seminars, forums, plus consultation of suppliers and clients.

The Solar industry have been very proactive in setting up many different conferences and seminars, in fact EA Technology has attended quite a number of them over the past couple of years; however, they are typically centered around Finance, Feed in Tariffs and optimising assets through re-investment. All of these subjects are obviously very worthwhile and require discussion; however, this means that very little time is spent discussing and acquiring knowledge on engineering aspects of a solar site’s High Voltage networks.

EA Technology will be organising a Solar Engineer’s Forum who’s purpose will be to discuss issues, good working practices and failures experienced by Solar EPCs, O&Ms, Investors etc. The forums will be based on a membership basis where an organisation will commit to two forums in any one membership year. It is planned that the Forums will be held during September and March at EA Technology’s Capenhurst offices (Near Chester), and staged in EA Technology’s lecture theatre, which is fully equipped with presentation and audio facilities.

The inaugural forum will have a set agenda that will cover presentations on:

• Electrical Safety Rules;
• Maintenance Strategies/Regimes;
• Equipment Specifications;
• Constraint Management;
• Condition Assessment;
• Storage.

The last session of each forum will be an open discussion where members can raise issues, ask questions and request future agenda items in upcoming forums. The sharing of knowledge between similar type organisations can be a very powerful tool in preventing failures. For further information of Asset Management or the Solar Engineer Forums, please contact EA Technology at asset.management@eatechnology.com.