Empowering Solar Engineering with Digital Twins

On the 24 and 25 of January, PVcase assembled a team to attend the Solar Quality Summit, a key forum in Europe for discussing high quality in PV EPC, O&M, and asset management. The event provided an opportunity to learn about the latest developments in solar PV quality management, network with leading professionals, and host a workshop on digital twins in the solar sector.

Overcoming the Quality-Quantity Binary in the “Great Solar Scale-Up”

The world is experiencing the “great solar scale-up.” According to BNEF, 269 GW of solar were installed in 2022, more than double the installations in 2019. Europe, amid its worst energy crisis in 50 years, deployed over 41 GW, doubling growth in just two years. SolarPower Europe projects that, with sufficient ambition, over 1 TW of solar could be built annually in the EU by 2030. Maintaining high standards in commissioning, operation, and maintenance as the fleet grows exponentially is a major challenge for the solar industry.

To meet this challenge, the sector must avoid a quality-quantity tradeoff. As solar projects become more complex, maintaining high quality is essential to retain the confidence of investors, politicians, and the public. Productivity and accuracy tools like PVcase, which can cut design time by 50%, are crucial. More broadly, developing a “quality mindset”—striving for excellence, applying lessons learned, investing in people, and attracting top talent—is necessary. Treating quality as non-negotiable will ensure solar PV continues to deliver reliable, carbon-free, and affordable electricity.

The Case for Digital Twins in the Solar Industry

Beyond construction, the scale-up brings the challenge of ensuring that hundreds of GW of PV plants are operated, managed, and maintained correctly. Improving how information about PV assets is created, shared, and stored throughout their lifecycle is key.

Currently, PV plants are often re-modeled multiple times in different software, reducing efficiency, increasing errors, and limiting information sharing. Documentation gaps are common, with technical data scattered across platforms or missing entirely, especially for older plants. This makes onboarding assets onto O&M platforms, evaluating improvements, or assessing portfolios time-consuming and difficult.

Digital twins offer a solution. Within the TRUST PV Horizon 2020 project, PVcase and partners developed a “digital twin” that connects asset data and processes with PV plant layouts and simulations, from design to decommissioning. The standardized digital twin is defined as “a parametrized (2D/3D) model of a PV system that contains all the physical information needed to simulate the behavior and performance of the real PV plant it represents.”

While digital twins are a growing topic in solar, the industry lags behind others in digital twinning capabilities. The TRUST PV digital twin is based on physical information to simulate real plant behavior and performance, including:

• ​3D model of the plant (modules, shading objects, terrain topography)
• ​Complete electrical design and component characteristics
• ​Component metadata

This data must be highly accurate and ideally standardized for compatibility across service providers. The digital twin should also support versioning to track changes.

At the Solar Quality Summit, PVcase organized an interactive workshop to explore challenges from the diversity, lack of standardization, and non-transferability of PV asset information. Over 70 participants from various backgrounds were divided into groups (developers, asset owners, EPC and O&M engineers, finance and investors, independent engineers, service providers) to discuss current practices and workflows.

Key takeaways included:

• ​Developers were most blamed for not sharing PV project information, even by themselves. Finance and investors received the least blame but attributed the most blame to others.
• ​Processing plant information remains time-consuming due to difficulties in data collection, complexity, and variable quality. PDFs are still widely used, even for layout information. Some groups reported spending about two weeks just to onboard a project, with longer times for older plants.
• ​Recovering or recreating lost asset information is a major issue, especially for plants over six years old (about 40% of the EU fleet). Missing information can hinder repairs and fault resolution.
• ​All groups saw significant value in digital twins to improve asset information accuracy, develop robust data procedures, and enhance data quality over time by integrating lessons learned.

Communication: The Key to Healthy Relationships (Also in the PV Industry)

As the industry grows, improving communication and sharing of PV asset information—from project development to decommissioning—is essential. Better communication saves time and effort, strengthens trust with finance and investment communities, regulators, and citizens, and supports the sector’s growth.

PVcase is committed to overcoming the quality-quantity binary throughout the PV asset lifecycle and to advancing digital twins in the solar sector. There is broad agreement among solar professionals on the value of digital twins, though their final form is still evolving. PVcase aims to continue facilitating discussions and innovation in this area.

If you have ideas or experiences with digital twins, PVcase encourages you to reach out. You can also contact them to improve your solar design and engineering process with their PVcase Ground Mount software.