An industry initiative for solar PV
A shared standard for how well solar is run.
The Solar Operations Maturity Institute (SOM Institute) brings together a standardised maturity model for the solar PV industry and a South African benchmark built on it: one common language for how well solar assets are monitored, measured, optimised, financed and reported on.
Its first instrument is the Solar O&M Maturity Survey. It takes under ten minutes, benchmarks you against the South African cohort, and gives you a gap analysis toward the level you set for yourself.
The case
What does ‘well run’ mean for a solar asset?
Every solar asset produces data. What happens next is where operations part ways. At one end, a site is found to be down only when someone else says so, production is whatever it is, and energy data never becomes money. At the other, alerts reach a person with an escalation path, every lost kWh is explained and costed, and financial reporting stands up to owners, auditors and funders.
Owners, O&M providers, PPA parties, funders and boards all have a stake in where an operation sits between those two ends. Without a shared scale, none of them can easily say where they stand, how they compare with their peers, or what the next level would take.
The SOM Institute’s answer is a standardised maturity model: seven areas of practice, each measured on the same 0–5 spine, so that levels are comparable across areas and mean the same thing to everyone who reads them.
The model
Seven areas, one spine.
Every area is rated on the same six levels. A 3 in Monitoring (one view) and a 3 in Finance (tariff-accurate) are both systematic, each in its own terms.
- Level 0: Blind
- Level 1: Manual
- Level 2: Reactive tooling
- Level 3: Systematic
- Level 4: Automated & integrated
- Level 5: Optimised & quantified
Level 0, No monitoring
“We find out a site is down when someone else tells us.”
Between them: portal-by-portal, vendor alerts, one view, alerting with ownership.
Level 5, Measured & prioritised
“Alert noise is managed, detection/response times are measured, and the highest-impact sites are watched hardest.”
The seven areas
Monitoring
How quickly a fault at a site is identified and acted on.
Performance
How each site’s output is measured against expectation, and how well shortfalls are understood.
Data Quality
How far the underlying data can be relied on.
Data Analysis
How far analysis goes below site totals — string, temperature, voltage, load.
Optimisation
How actively the installed system is adjusted to improve its financial return.
Finance
How generation is translated into figures finance teams and funders accept.
Reporting
What reaches clients, boards and colleagues, and how much is assembled by hand.
Who it is for
Four positions, one survey.
The survey asks which of these describes your organisation, in these words:
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Owner-user
“We own solar assets and use the power ourselves”
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Owner-PPA provider
“We own solar assets and sell the power under a PPA”
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Provider
“We build, operate or manage solar for other businesses”
EPCs, O&M providers and asset managers
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PPA customer
“We buy power under a PPA, someone else owns the plant”
Also readingFunders, boards and landlords. They read the reports rather than answer the survey.
What you receive
Three things in return.
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First
Your maturity, benchmarked
Area by area, against the anonymised South African cohort of installers, O&M providers, asset owners and managers. Confidential.
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Second
A gap analysis
For every area, the practical steps from today’s level to the target you set.
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Third
The industry insights
The aggregate picture: where the sector is strong, where it lags, and what the leaders do differently.
Results are emailed within about two weeks of the survey closing. Individual answers stay confidential.
How it works
Under ten minutes, area by area.
Seven areas. Thirteen rated questions. One yes-or-no question.
- For each area
- You say how important the area is to you (not applicable, low, medium or high) and the level you want to reach, from 0 to 5. Then, for each question in that area, where you are today, again from 0 to 5. If a question describes something you are not familiar with, you can say so.
- The yes-or-no
- Whether the expected-generation figure is independently verified.
- Your operation
- Your approximate site count and installed capacity, in ranges; where production is lost (grid unavailability while Eskom or the municipal supply is down, downtime and maintenance, system underperformance, throttling or curtailment); and an approximate monthly budget range for monitoring and analytics per site.
- How levels are read
- An area’s level is the average of its questions. Areas you mark not applicable are left unrated rather than scored zero. Comparison with peers is area by area. Your gap is your target minus today, and its priority is importance multiplied by gap. All areas carry equal weight.
- Contact details
- Collected so that your report can be sent to you. Read the privacy note.
Partners
Run in partnership with
- University of Cape Town
- TruePoint South Africa
- Partnerships for Growth (P4G)
- SolrBoost
The maturity model behind the SOM Institute was developed by SolrBoost. Read the model history
The Solar O&M Maturity Survey
See where you stand, and what the next level looks like.
Under ten minutes. Confidential. Your benchmark, your gap analysis and the industry insights are emailed within about two weeks of the survey closing.
Take the survey