An industry initiative for solar PV

One shared ladder for solar. Find your step.

The Solar Operations Maturity Institute (SOM Institute) gives solar PV a standardised maturity model: a common language for how well solar assets are monitored, measured, optimised, financed and reported on. Start with the Solar O&M Maturity Survey. It takes under ten minutes and benchmarks you against your South African peers.

Take the survey See the model
  1. 0 Blind
  2. 1 Manual
  3. 2 Reactive tooling
  4. 3 Systematic
  5. 4 Automated & integrated
  6. 5 Optimised & quantified

Who it’s for

Which of these is you?

The survey starts by asking how you’re connected to the plant. Wherever you sit, a shared maturity model gives you something specific.

  • If you own the plant and use the power yourself

    In the survey“We own solar assets and use the power ourselves”

    You carry the investment, so you want to know it’s delivering. The model shows how quickly a fault reaches someone who acts on it, whether shortfalls are explained, and whether your savings are worked out on the tariff you actually pay. It also gives you a plain way to show your board, landlord or funder where things stand.

  • If you own the plant and sell the power under a PPA

    In the survey“We own solar assets and sell the power under a PPA”

    Your income depends on what the plant delivers, and on figures your customer can trust. The model lays out each step toward financial reporting that stands up to owners, auditors and funders, and shows where you stand against the South African cohort along the way.

  • If you build, operate or manage solar for other businesses

    EPCs, O&M providers and asset managers

    In the survey“We build, operate or manage solar for other businesses”

    Your clients judge you on response, performance and reporting. A shared standard gives you a neutral way to describe your service — alerts routed to a person with an escalation path, underperformance traced to its root cause, reports that tell each reader what needs their attention — and to see how you compare with your peers.

  • If you buy the power under a PPA and someone else owns the plant

    In the survey“We buy power under a PPA, someone else owns the plant”

    You don’t run the plant, but you pay for what it produces. The model gives you the right questions to ask: how the plant is watched, how lost production is explained and valued, and whether the expected-generation figure is independently verified.

Funders, boards and landlords: you read the reports rather than answer the survey. A shared model means those reports can describe maturity in the same terms, whoever prepares them.

What you get

Under ten minutes of your time. Three things back.

  1. Your maturity, benchmarked

    Area by area, against the anonymised South African cohort of installers, O&M providers, asset owners and managers. Your results stay confidential.

  2. A gap analysis

    For every area, the practical steps from today’s level to the target you set yourself.

  3. The industry insights

    The aggregate picture: where the sector is strong, where it lags, and what the leaders do differently.

There’s no instant score. All three arrive by email within about two weeks of the survey closing.

The model

Seven areas. One ladder from 0 to 5.

Every area is measured on the same six-level spine, so a level means the same kind of progress wherever you meet it.

  1. 0Blind
  2. 1Manual
  3. 2Reactive tooling
  4. 3Systematic
  5. 4Automated & integrated
  6. 5Optimised & quantified
  • 01

    Monitoring

    How quickly a fault at a site is identified and acted on.

    0No monitoring 5Measured & prioritised

  • 02

    Performance

    How each site’s output is measured against expectation, and how well shortfalls are understood.

    0Not tracked 5Every lost kWh explained and costed

  • 03

    Data Quality

    How far the underlying data can be relied on.

    0Unknown 5Quantified confidence

  • 04

    Data Analysis

    How far analysis goes below site totals — string, temperature, voltage, load.

    0Raw data only 5Continuous fleet analytics

  • 05

    Optimisation

    How actively the installed system is adjusted to improve its financial return.

    0Commissioning settings 5Continuous & verified

  • 06

    Finance

    How generation is translated into figures finance teams and funders accept.

    0No financial view 5Auditable

  • 07

    Reporting

    What reaches clients, boards and colleagues, and how much is assembled by hand.

    0None 5Insight-driven

  • Every level, in full

    See what each step means in every area before you start.

    Read the model

The survey

How the survey works

The Solar O&M Maturity Survey is a self-assessment: seven areas, thirteen rated questions and one yes-or-no question, in under ten minutes.

  1. Tell us who you are

    Pick the description that fits: you own the plant and use the power, you own it and sell the power under a PPA, you build, operate or manage solar for others, or you buy the power under a PPA.

  2. Rate the seven areas

    For each area, say how important it is to you (or that it doesn’t apply), pick the level you want to reach, then say where you are today on each question. Not familiar with a question? You can say so.

  3. Get your results

    About two weeks after the survey closes, your benchmark, your gap analysis and the industry insights arrive by email.

A few closing questions

Roughly how many sites you have and their installed capacity (as ranges); where you lose production, whether to grid unavailability when Eskom or the municipal supply is down, downtime and maintenance, system underperformance, or throttling and curtailment; and an approximate monthly budget per site for monitoring and analytics.

Confidential by design

Your individual answers are confidential. SolrBoost operates the survey and is the only party that processes individual responses; the benchmark partners see aggregated, anonymised results only. Read the privacy note.

The benchmark

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

Find your step.

Under ten minutes and confidential. Your benchmark, your gap analysis and the industry insights, by email.

Take the survey