Operation and Maintenance (O&M) solutions have a direct impact on the technical and economic performance of renewable generation assets. They improve the availability of plants and increase the net production of energy per year and reduce the cost of energy (LCOE), which has a positive impact in terms of return on investment.

The gradual penetration of advanced technologies allows progress to be made towards a management model for plants with a minimum presence of operators in them. The gradual incorporation of technologies that are already consolidated in the industrial sector, such as robotics, will make it easier for certain maintenance tasks -those that traditionally required the physical presence of operators on site- to be done remotely. The combination with data analysis techniques and machine learning will facilitate the monitoring, supervision and automated control of all generation assets in real time, either in isolation or aggregated. The sophistication of data analysis technologies, the improvements made in processing models and the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems will also allow progress towards the design of diagnosis and prognosis models that provide granular information at the asset and plant level, and to design optimised maintenance plans for the medium and long term.

ACCIONA Energía has a portfolio of 8,589 MW in wind farms, 30 large-scale photovoltaic plans (either owned by the company or operated for clients) with a total capacity of over 1,500 MWp, 61.5 MWp in solar gardens and 85 substations. ACCIONA is an expert in O&M solutions for clean energy assets. It works on its own O&M solutions from a perspective of prevention, safety and innovation, allowing it maximise production volumes throughout the working life of the assets. To do this, ACCIONA has its own Renewable Energy Control Center (CECOER), from where it supervises the operation of renewable energy plants in real time, managing data from more than 400 facilities.

The CECOER records more than 500,000 incidents a year in the facilities monitored. Of these, 60% are solved remotely, avoiding more than 250,000 local operations. Continuing to improve the efficiency of O&M involves increasing the percentage of incidents solved remotely, reducing the probability of them occurring, and making progress towards autonomous management and resolution.

ACCIONA Energía is launching this challenge to identify tools and solutions based on disruptive technologies that enable the implementation of a facility management model that has a minimum presence of operators on site. The solutions proposed should be in line with one or more of the scopes indicated below:

• Robotic technology for autonomous inspection, maintenance and repair on site
• Autonomous solutions that allow real-time diagnosis of the status of the plant and the assets that comprise it
• Advanced data processing models to define medium- and long-term maintenance programmes based on ‘state of health’ and asset performance models.

In any case, the proposed solutions should have the ultimate aim of extending the working life of the assets and make their technical and economic performance more efficient.