The model

Seven areas, one climb from 0 to 5

This is what the Solar O&M Maturity Survey asks you to place yourself on: every level of every area, in full, so you know what you’ll be rating before you start.

The spine

Six levels, the same in every area

Each area’s levels describe something concrete in that area, but they all follow one spine. A 3 in Monitoring and a 3 in Finance are the same kind of step: systematic.

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

Monitoring

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

  1. No monitoring

    We find out a site is down when someone else tells us.

  2. Portal-by-portal

    We log in to each vendor portal manually, when prompted.

  3. Vendor alerts

    Per-brand portal alerts are on; someone scans them most days.

  4. One view

    A consolidated cross-brand view; offline sites are caught within hours.

  5. Alerting with ownership

    Near-real-time alerts routed to a person with an escalation path and response expectations.

  6. Measured & prioritised

    Alert noise is managed, detection/response times are measured, and the highest-impact sites are watched hardest.

Performance

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

  1. Not tracked

    Production is whatever it is.

  2. Eyeballed

    Monthly glance at kWh vs a gut feel or last month.

  3. Vs a static estimate

    Compared against the design estimate or yield guarantee only.

  4. Weather-adjusted

    Expected production per site reflects the weather that actually happened; shortfalls are flagged.

  5. Causes attributed

    Underperformance is detected fleet-wide and traced to its root cause (soiling, shading, string faults, diode failures).

  6. Every lost kWh explained and costed

    Losses are attributed, valued in Rands, benchmarked, and drive a planned remediation list.

Data Quality

How far the underlying data can be relied on.

  1. Unknown

    Gaps and errors in site data go unnoticed.

  2. Found by accident

    Data problems surface when a report looks wrong.

  3. Spot checks

    Occasional manual review of data completeness.

  4. Gap detection

    Missing data is detected and backfilled systematically.

  5. Cross-validated

    Independent sources (meter vs inverter) are reconciled routinely.

  6. Quantified confidence

    Data completeness/accuracy is measured per site, and every downstream number carries that confidence.

Data Analysis

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

  1. Raw data only

    Nobody looks below site-level totals.

  2. Occasional exports

    Data pulled to Excel now and then, when there’s a problem.

  3. Portal charting

    Per-site charts in vendor portals, on demand.

  4. String & temperature analysis

    String-level and AC/DC/BMS temperature analysis is done when investigating.

  5. Automated anomaly analysis

    String, temperature and alert-pattern anomalies are surfaced automatically per site.

  6. Continuous fleet analytics

    The whole fleet is analysed continuously; faults are found without anyone asking.

Optimisation

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

  1. Commissioning settings

    Inverters run whatever was set on day one.

  2. Occasional tweaks

    Settings changed manually when someone thinks of it.

  3. Seasonal reviews

    Periodic reviews of setpoints and tariff settings.

  4. Per-site optimisation

    Charge/discharge tuned to each site’s tariff windows and load shape.

  5. Simulation-backed

    Upgrades are chosen from simulations with predicted ROI.

  6. Continuous & verified

    Optimisation runs continuously and the realised savings are measured and reported.

Finance

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

  1. No financial view

    Energy data never becomes money.

  2. Rules of thumb

    Savings estimated with a generic c/kWh figure.

  3. Estimated savings

    Calculated, but on approximate or outdated tariffs.

  4. Tariff-accurate

    Savings and utility-bill reconciliations use each site’s actual tariff.

  5. Asset-level finance

    IRR and ROI per asset, with billing and reconciliation systemised.

  6. Auditable

    Financial reporting stands up to owners, auditors and funders.

Reporting

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

  1. None

    No regular reporting exists.

  2. On request

    Screenshots and ad-hoc emails when someone asks.

  3. Manual monthly

    Someone copies numbers into a template every month.

  4. Automated & standard

    Standardised reports generate and send themselves.

  5. Role-tailored

    Distinct O&M / finance / customer reports, plus a customer-facing portal.

  6. Insight-driven

    Reporting is exception-led; it tells each reader what needs their attention, and customers self-serve the rest.

From answers to results

How the levels become your results

Kept deliberately simple, so you can see how you got there.

  • Each area’s level is the average of its questions. You rate where you are today on every question in an area.

  • Not applicable means not rated. An area you mark as not applicable is left out rather than scored zero.

  • You are compared area by area. Your peers are the anonymised South African cohort.

  • Your gap is your target minus today. You set the target yourself, area by area.

  • Priority is importance multiplied by gap. The areas that matter most to you and sit furthest from your target come first.

  • Every area carries the same weight. No area counts for more than another.

Alongside the thirteen rated questions, one yes-or-no question asks whether the expected-generation figure is independently verified.

Now find your step.

Place yourself on the ladder in under ten minutes. Your results arrive by email, and your answers stay confidential.

Take the survey