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The company plans to execute the first service in this month of March. Initially, it will cover the RM, OHiggins and Valparaíso regions, but it plans to open a branch in the north of the country within 2 years.
The Chilean solar market has grown exponentially in recent years thanks to the considerable decrease in CAPEX of new installations, which have been almost 70% in the last 10 years; coupled with the high levels of radiation in the country and the clear political and environmental will.
"However, operation and maintenance have been left aside, with the misnomer the panel takes care of itself, which has caused major problems in the older parks, and sacrifices of potential efficiencies for making the minimum effort ”, Alejandro Opazo, Line Manager of the new ECR Solar , tells pv magazine .
This "lack of concern" is increased in the PMGD sector, where OPEX is lower due to the size of the project and the geographical dispersion of the assets, which do not allow having internal resources or a single supplier for everything that is needed. “From there arises the opportunity that we attack, to build a company that takes on this neglected segment and uses highly trained personnel, enhanced with technology and first class equipment to professionalize this part of the industry that has remained the area that nobody wants to touch. due to the complexity of working with personnel on the ground”, he adds.
ECR Solar was born from the ECR Group, specialized in the delivery of Outsourcing services and solutions with more than 40 years of experience in Chile, to diversify its lines of business in the face of a sustainable growth of the group. "Looking for industries with high growth and a strategic nature, they start 2021 with ECR Salud, and this 2022 launches ECR Solar, experts in the maintenance of solar assets", explains a company spokesperson to pv magazine .
Within this diversification process, Alejandro Opazo entered, after having spent a couple of years working in the most technological area of ??the industry, an experience that showed him the potential for growth and improvement in efficiency in solar assets through the execution directly from field services.
“This is why we decided to focus on the most neglected segment of the industry due to its scale, the PMGD segment, with a focus on the delivery of professionalized maintenance services”, he adds and points out that they start “with an advantage”: “Thanks to ECR Group we have the experience to manage the demands of a new business area and provide the necessary people and services”, they affirm, and point out as strengths committed teams, the latest in tools and technology, in addition to the knowledge and generation of know-how .
ECR Solars aspiration is to offer a service based on 3 pillars to achieve excellent results: technology, trust and operational excellence. From the point of view of technology, a digital process allows for standardization and transparency (detailed document control). On the other hand, the simulation algorithms allow the company to know the clients assets only with the generation; and, finally, it allows optimization with thousands of simultaneous simulations, to obtain better results.
These graphs are obtained with open information available for both generation and engineering of solar plants. «In the yellow curve, we can see our simulation and in the blue curve the real generation of the park. Due to the low resolution of the data with which we work, issues such as the real generation being greater than the simulated one are seen, however; This comparison allows us to identify a lot about the operation of the plant, as shown in the graph of the second photo, where an increase in radiation is seen, which causes part of the generation of the plant to drop. We hope over time to improve the quality of the conclusions we obtain thanks to this”, explains Alejandro Opazo, Line Manager.
ECR Solar wants to stand out in operational excellence and, among its differential characteristics, they mention highly documented procedures, state-of-the-art machinery and equipment, a robust training plan and continuous improvement as a pillar of the company. "We will even have a laboratory," says Opazo.
The company plans to execute the first service in this month of March. Initially, it will cover the Metropolitan Region, OHiggins and Valparaíso regions. "However, we seek to move to the generation market (larger plants) and open a branch in the north of the country within 2 years," he adds. "We came to stay and aim to become market leaders," concludes Alejandro Opazo. |
