kWh Analytics, a leading provider of Climate Insurance for renewable energy assets, announced today that it will continue phase two work on a $2M award from the U.S. Department of Energy under the Increasing Affordability, Reliability, and Manufacturability of PV Cells, Modules, and Systems award, an initiative under the Energy Department’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) aimed at extending the lifespan of photovoltaic (PV) systems.
This award enables the continuation of research kWh Analytics began in 2022 into building a program for insurers to incent solar asset owners for reliability measures. Over the past 24 months, kWh Analytics has been developing ways to identify points of solar PV equipment failure and understand the resolution outcomes that bring sites back online quickly and efficiently with the end goal of creating a ‘safe driver discount’ for reliable assets. To achieve this, kWh Analytics used natural language processing of operations and maintenance (O&M) service logs to learn what makes solar assets reliable. These field insights inform upstream stakeholder decisions, such as O&M preventative maintenance and spare parts strategies, thus developing a feedback loop.
“As an insurance stakeholder, we are continuously collecting and analyzing data, and looking for opportunities to incentivize reliable and resilient behavior,” said Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics. “We are grateful to the Department of Energy for enabling us to share important findings that will impact how the industry designs and operates solar PV facilities and reward those reliability measures, as we collectively work to build a reliable clean energy future.”
As kWh Analytics enters the second phase of the Department of Energy project, the company will explore ways in which field data can inform insurers’ decisions to incent asset owners for putting reliability measures into practice. For example, kWh Analytics’ research on equipment reliability has shown that while inverters tend to fail the most often, modules take the longest to replace. Therefore, sites that include operations and maintenance staff experienced in inverter repair and/or modules in their spare parts inventory should be eligible to receive favorable insurance rates.
The company plans to publish the results of its research project in 2025.
The decision to further fund kWh Analytics’ research in this area is the latest milestone in the company’s strong and enduring relationship with the Department of Energy. Most recently, kWh Analytics was awarded $2.4 million by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Materials, Operation, and Recycling of Photovoltaics (MORE PV) Funding Program in September 2024. kWh Analytics’ work with the Department of Energy and leading industry experts is an important part of its commitment to advance solar PV resiliency measures and find innovative solutions that contribute to the long-term viability of the industry.
