INSUS reads inverter yield and weather the plant already logs, separates recoverable soiling from losses a clean cannot fix, and prices the next clean against recovered energy. O&M keeps the schedule.
01
Soiling reduces output. Cleaning spends labor, water and time.
02
The loss is read from yield the inverters already report.
03
Advisory only. The cleaning crew stays yours to schedule.
The problem
Raw production moves with irradiance, temperature and inverter clipping more than with dust, so a slow soiling trend is hard to see and harder to justify a crew for. One block soils faster than the next, rain does not always restore output, and clipping can hide soiling while the inverter is already at its limit. Fixed cleaning days then spend water and labor while the array is still clean, or leave energy unrecovered after dust has cemented.
The shift
Nothing here changes how the array is cleaned. What changes is when the clean is worth sending, and how that decision is justified.
Today
With INSUS
How it works
This fits OptiStudio as performance decision support beside existing inverter SCADA and plant historians. Access is read-only. O&M decides whether to send the crew.
Connect
Connect read-only to inverter AC and DC power, plane-of-array irradiance, module or ambient temperature, rainfall where recorded, and cleaning history with method, blocks, water, labor and any production held during the clean.
Understand
Correct for irradiance and temperature to establish what this plant should have produced. Split the remaining gap into soiling, longer-term degradation, downtime and clipping.
Predict
Project the soiling rate from this plant's own recent history. Estimate what a clean would return on the dirty blocks, and whether forecast rain would do part of that job.
Advise
Show where the value of unrecovered energy exceeds the cost of the clean, using your offtake price and cleaning costs. O&M decides, because access windows, water limits and contract minimums sit outside the model.
Verify
Compare predicted and realised recovery against each clean's pre-clean baseline. A clean that returns little can flag degradation or an inverter issue rather than dust.
Getting started
For utility-scale PV O&M and performance teams. Delivered through OptiStudio as cleaning-timing decision support. Expert Services can help with data assessment and validation. Advisory and read-only. No new hardware.
Related for renewables
Soiling cleaning economics sits beside curtailment capture and gearbox main-bearing life on the same renewables portfolio.
Soiling is hard to see in raw yield and cleaning intervals are often calendar-based. This use case tracks corrected soiling loss and advises when a clean is worth its water, labor and downtime.
Inverter production, plane-of-array irradiance, module or ambient temperature and a cleaning log. No new sensors to start when those tags already exist in SCADA and the historian.
Possibly nothing, and discovery should establish that honestly. Where the performance ratio still mixes soiling with degradation, trips and clipping, and does not price a clean against recovered energy, that gap is the use case.
No. O&M decides when to clean. Access to SCADA and the historian is read-only. There is no closed-loop version.
No. Published fleet estimates vary by climate and year. Each plant is modelled from its own yield and cleaning history. Those figures are not INSUS results.
Through OptiStudio as performance decision support. Expert Services can support data assessment, integration and validation with your O&M team.
Correction quality and cleaning-log completeness bound the split between soiling and other losses. Rates from one climate do not transfer to another. Contract minimums and water restrictions can override the economic point.
Renewables · Utility-scale PV
A back-test on your own yield and cleaning history will answer that, and show whether the clean before it was worth the water and the crew.
