PECM Issue 39 2019 | Page 14

EDITOR’S CHOICE CONTROL PLATFORM SOLO ENERGY FLEXIBLE, RENEWABLE ENERGY THE CHALLENGE In order for the energy to be stored and shared securely, Solo needed to find a control platform capable of remotely communicating with and controlling the batteries and chargers, as well as enabling vast amounts of data to be recorded and stored. The platform needed to enable Solo to control and remotely communicate with all its distributed assets individually and collectively, allowing energy to be quickly shared between them. It also needed to provide visualisation tools that would enable Solo to visualise and analyse all its energy data so that it could identify trends and improve performance of 14 PECM Issue 39 the VPP, and present this information back to its customers as a user-friendly interface. In order to allow Solo’s software to grow along with the business, the software also needed to be fully scalable. With data security of paramount importance, Solo also needed to find the most secure environment in which to host the control platform - one which required zero IT infrastructure in order to deliver a cost- effective option, and which could be set up quickly, deliver 24-hour monitoring and comprehensive customer support, and guarantee uptime. THE SOLUTION In 2017, industrial IT solutions provider SolutionsPT recommended Wonderware System Platform 2017 as the software most suitable for Solo’s needs. Andrew Graham, SolutionsPT’s Wonderware Product Manager, said: “System Platform 2017 is an operating system for industrial applications. It provides configuration, deployment, security and data connectivity, bringing essential context to organisations’ data and providing valuable system documentation throughout the system lifecycle – everything Solo was looking for.