How Sunrock is maximizing the profitability of its energy assets

Lacking real-time visibility and control of solar assets    

More than 40 years since solar PV first came on the scene, it now represents 22.4% of all electricity generated by renewable energy sources in the EU. With this growing dependence on solar and other clean energy sources, energy assets must be flexible enough to quickly ramp production up or down to support the smooth functioning of the electric grid. 

Beyond supporting the grid, asset owners also need real-time visibility and control of their assets to avoid losses during negative market conditions, and to take advantage of trading opportunities when prices are favorable. In 2022, this level of controllability was exactly what Sunrock was missing.

Mark Pruissen, Sunrock’s Director of Asset Management, explains: “With the solar PV installations, we face the issue that the energy market is changing rapidly. We’re dealing with grid congestion, negative energy prices, and for that our assets need the highest flexibility to react to those market circumstances.” 

Sunrock’s operating systems at the time simply weren’t designed to deliver the real-time flexibility needed to respond to these new challenges. As Michiel van Heusden, Director Digital, Tech & Data, puts it: “I think actually 1.5 years ago, our solar farms were stupid, so to say. We weren't able to steer them and to get real-time data from those farms.”

Finding the right technology partner 

The Sunrock team set out to find a secure way to connect data from their solar assets to the centralized energy management system. With 1 GWp of operational rooftop solar farms—spanning 5 million square metres—and another 1 GWp of solar energy in development, Sunrock needed to ensure that the chosen solution was scalable.  

While there were several software providers available, Sunrock was looking for a collaborative and dedicated partner that could provide a full-service solution to securely connect its asset data, and support its expansion into new business areas in the future. 

When they came across the edge computing platform by Helin, it was a natural fit. Michiel explains how the collaboration started: “We did quite an in-depth market analysis to look for a suitable solution partner to connect all our solar assets initially. We found that Helin was the best fit, not only on the cultural level but also because of the growth phase that the company was in.” 

With a partner found, the team set about developing a plan to implement Smart Grid Manager at a handful of Sunrock’s existing solar farms.

Gaining real-time visibility and control of solar assets 

Fast forward a few months, and Smart Grid Manager was successfully integrated with Sunrock’s cloud-based energy management system (EMS) and was providing fast, reliable, unified data streams from multiple solar farms. 

Smart Grid Manager collects operating data from all connected assets, regardless of communication protocols, and transforms it into a Unified Data Model. This standardized data format simplifies integration with cloud-based EMS and trading desks, and makes it easy to benchmark across assets, sites, and countries using historical asset data.

Examples of the real-time data points collected are: 

• Active power
• Irradiance
• Error codes
• Actual electricity consumption by the tenant, EV charging points, or the BESS
• State of Charge for the BESS (SoC)

Michiel outlines what this meant for Sunrock’s operations: “With Smart Grid Manager, we get real-time insights from our assets and that's something we didn't have before.” 

While data logging was the initial reason for implementing the solution, it soon became clear that it could do much more than just consolidate and format the data. By adding control capabilities, Sunrock could quickly ramp up or curtail its production based on instructions from the grid operator or market prices. 

Rolling out Smart Grid Manager across Sunrock’s portfolio  

After experiencing the controllability that Smart Grid Manager delivered at the first sites, Sunrock rolled it out across its portfolio of solar farms. Despite Sunrock’s assets being from a range of different OEMs, the process was quick and easy thanks to Helin’s equipment-agnostic, one-box approach: 

Michiel describes how this works: “What is really nice is that there is one box installed on each of our sites and that securely integrates with the Helin Cloud. So with this one box we ensure that we have a secure connection with all our assets and can easily change the configuration to add new BESS or solar assets, without changing the entire setup.”

Such scalability is essential for fast-growing companies like Sunrock. Asset owners must be able to efficiently onboard new assets at customer sites or if they acquire new assets. On top of this, they need modular solutions as companies no longer own just one asset type, it’s now common to operate entire local smart grids with a range of assets that generate, store, or consume electricity. 

As Mark explains: “Before we had the Helin Smart Grid Manager installed, we were not able to steer our assets. We see that this uniform way of setting the assets up helps us have a stable platform and to be able to curtail the assets in the same way.” 

With Smart Grid Manager up and running, Sunrock could focus on expanding its asset portfolio, delivering best-in-class asset management, and exploring the potential of trading its own electricity. 

Transitioning from solar producer to an integrated clean energy systems provider

Around this time, Sunrock had just started its journey from a solar PV producer to becoming a leader in integrated energy systems and trading electricity. While this transition opened up new revenue streams, it also meant that Sunrock now needed a real-time, secure integration between solar, battery energy storage system (BESS), and EV charging assets, and its newly set up internal trading desk. 

Fortunately, Smart Grid Manager is designed to easily connect any type of asset to a centralized cloud-based EMS and trading desks via APIs, making it the perfect solution to support Sunrock’s next phase as an electricity trader.  

Michiel explains how this has helped Sunrock:

“The real-time insights from our assets are not only useful for maintenance and asset management purposes, but also for trading purposes. Now we know exactly what's happening on our sites at all times.” 

This works both ways. Sunrock can quickly ramp up their production when market prices are favorable. But equally, the team can also rapidly curtail output if prices turn negative: avoiding situations where they would have to pay to offload the electricity. 

Thanks to the solution’s high-end security, end-to-end encryption and low latency, Sunrock always has highly accurate data on the current and forecast output or consumption of their assets. This means Sunrock could bid to provide ancillary services like peak shaving to support the grid operator, without the risk of penalties or missed revenue opportunities by under- or over-estimating the actual electricity produced or consumed. 

Providing a better service to industrial customers

Two years on, and Sunrock is still finding new ways for how Smart Grid Manager can support its growth, above and beyond controlling its solar assets. This includes using Smart Grid Manager to provide a better service to its real estate, manufacturing, and business customers and tenants like Mercedes-Benz, BMW Group, and Levi Strauss & Co. 

As Sunrock’s assets are deployed directly at customers’ facilities, the Sunrock engineers are not on-site to constantly monitor the assets. But with Smart Grid Manager, Sunrock can immediately identify, diagnose, and resolve issues on any customer site, either remotely via over-the-air updates or by dispatching an engineer. 

Michiel explains how this works: “Smart Grid Manager gives us real-time visibility of our assets on customers’ sites and whether the local energy solution is working as designed. And if something goes wrong on site, we get alerts in real time so that we can directly interact with our partners on site or asset partners to quickly resolve the issue.”

This is a win-win set-up as Sunrock can monitor and optimize operation of its assets to maintain high uptime, and customers benefit from reliable access to clean energy without the hassle of maintaining its own assets.  

Future-proofing Sunrock’s asset management

As the energy sector becomes increasingly reliant on clean energy solutions and flexibility services, Smart Grid Manager helps Sunrock quickly respond to new market opportunities and ways of operating their assets. 

Mark explains:

“Smart Grid Manager is not only a single solution to help us curtail our solar assets. We see a lot of things on the Helin roadmap that will help us in the future and will smarten up our assets even further.” 

As for whether he’d recommend other companies to follow Sunrock’s lead in using this solution, Mark says: “Having Helin’s Smart Grid Manager as our one central platform is a great benefit for our asset portfolio. I can highly recommend industry peers to have a similar setup.”

Getting started with Smart Grid Manager

Are you looking to optimize operations at your generation or storage sites? Is your asset data streamed and stored separately from your other operating and IT systems? Smart Grid Manager might be exactly what you’re looking for.  

Get in touch for an introduction call to see how Smart Grid Manager can help you optimize your energy assets and earn greater returns. 

About the interviewees 

Mark Pruissen 

Mark Pruissen is Director of Asset Management at Sunrock, where he oversees the technical and commercial management of 250+ assets totalling over 500 MW across the Netherlands, Germany, and France. 

With over 15 years of experience in renewable energy and asset management, he previously held multiple leadership roles at Vattenfall, including Head of Business Excellence and Head of Asset Management for Onshore Wind. 

Michiel van Heusden

Michiel van Heusden is Director Digital, Tech & Data at Sunrock, where he leads digital transformation and technology strategy in the renewable energy space. 

With over 15 years of experience in IT leadership and operational excellence, Michiel has held several senior roles at Essent, including Director of Digital Transformation & Operational Excellence and IT Transformation Director.