Nine years operating a ~600kW multi-building school site

Highlights

The challenge

Context and operating problem

The site's PV was installed in stages over more than a decade, spreading a mixed fleet of Aurora, ABB, Fronius and SolarEdge inverters across school buildings with no combined view of performance. LGC reporting relied on 16 meters with no IP connectivity, read manually — so every certificate claim and every health check meant another site visit by the installation company. Faults had nowhere to surface between visits.

The solution

How Autonomy Power helped

Autonomy connected all 26 inverters and meters through communications infrastructure we supply and manage, using a mix of Modbus and API integration to bring every brand and generation of hardware into one platform. A centralised grid protection system monitors voltage at the incoming mains and remotely disables every inverter across the school if voltage moves outside the acceptable range — one sensing point, site-wide protection. The 16 manual meters were superseded by grid-connected smart meters with local storage and multi-carrier 4G operating across all Australian telcos, keeping certificate-grade LGC data flowing even through carrier outages.

Autonomy handles communications, fault detection, notification and escalation. The installer responds to confirmed issues. The customer has a system they know is being looked after.

The outcome

Operational and commercial result

Over nine years of continuous monitoring, the platform has detected and escalated approximately ten inverter failures through to replacement, along with tripped circuit breakers, faulty isolators and damaged panels — faults that previously would have sat invisible between site visits, silently costing generation and LGC revenue. LGC reporting moved from manual reads across 16 meters to continuous, audit-grade remote metering. Site visits are now driven by confirmed faults, not by the absence of information.