Let me then kick it off. For now, we’re going to introduce you to what is the webinar about, what are we going to do, what is Solarplaza, and etc. But today’s webinar in particular is also organized in partnership with Omnidian, so a company that is the forefront of performance assurance and asset optimization. They’ve been closely involved in gathering these insights behind this year O&M report, and we’re excited to have them not only contributing this data, but also helping drive today’s conversation. So this discussion overall will be built around the initial insights from the state of the O&M industry 2026 report. A lot of you participated. I know that a lot of you already tried to provide your input to try to shape this conversation. So I really appreciate for your input. Now we can also see what results actually we have, a little bit of a sneak peek. So very exciting. The findings, they reflect different perspectives from asset owners. We have asset managers participating and O&M providers across utility-scale and C&I portfolios. And they highlight a clear shift. They highlight that operational strategy now is becoming more on a financial strategy. A lot of interesting insights, so let’s explore them together. What’s changing? What’s driving the cost pressure? What differentiates portfolios that are scaling successfully from those that are struggling? So yeah, very exciting. Now we’re gonna go a little bit over the agenda. So we have forty five minutes, and we will start with a brief overview of the report findings. And then we will move to a discussion with panellists, and we will reserve time a little bit for the Q&A part as well. So you can already start thinking about the questions that you want to ask. You have the Q&A box in the right top corner as well from you, so feel free to use it. It’s pretty much the same next to it that you have the chat box. If you have any technical issues, we will go into it in a minute. And finally, we will close the webinar with, of course, announcing the survey winner. So someone who participated in the survey, you actually can you could win the ticket to AMNA 2026. So let’s see who did it. Then let me a little bit go over Solarplaza. You saw a slide jumping here and back. So Solarplaza, for those who doesn’t know about us, very briefly, we are a Dutch-based platform specializing in solar and storage conferences worldwide. We are connecting people. I think for over twenty years, we focused on bringing together industry leaders through high level events and the content pieces, of course, in partnership with all our partners, or just bringing the expert to the stage. We are very, very excited to have you joining our events if you had, and if you’re not. So maybe that’s something that will be interesting for you, since this seminar is also part of the lead up to our Asset Management North America conference in San Diego this April. So look on our website, you can have some details. We have a very good lineup of attendees already. More people are joining, more people signing up. So if you are interested, let us know. We will share more details with you as well. So of course, today’s topic resonates very well with the conference, so more dive deep discussions will be also continued there. So feel free to join. All right, so a couple of quick housekeeping items. As I mentioned, there is a Q&A box. There is also a chat box, so you can use this for communication with us and if you have any questions. Also, this session is recorded, so use that opportunity to afterwards receive presentation slides and the full recording. I think it’s going to take maybe one or two days. So feel free to also ask your questions. This will be all noted and it will be all mentioned afterwards. So exciting, as I mentioned. Now, let me do a short introduction to Matt. Matt, maybe you can turn on your camera already so we can see you here as well. So Matt is senior director of enterprise sales at Omnidian, and he brings, I think, maybe over eight years of experience optimizing renewable energy portfolio, but also efficiency and safety. He currently supports over two gigawatts of distributed generation storage nationwide, and he has a strong pulse on what’s happening across portfolios. And I think in his free time, he enjoys watching his hometown Seattle Seahawks dominate the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. I’m pretty sure that some of you might have opinions about it, so feel free to chat with Matt afterwards about that. But Matt, you will be also doing this I see Paul for your reaction. Thank you so much. I see you will be also doing and leading this discussion alongside with Jay Smith, who is the Vice President of Asset Management and Operations at Standard Solar. So Jay, you can say hello to us as well, and Bala, who is a Senior Manager of Asset Optimization at Arevon Energy. So together they will oversee and lead this discussion with Matt starting and kicking off. And yeah, we see now Jay and Bala also joining. Thank you, guys. But for now, Matt, the floor is yours. You’re also going to get control now. So go ahead. Good luck and have fun. Thank you, Anna. Thanks everybody for joining today. I think Nico Johnson says it best. Thanks for giving us your most non renewable resource, your time. So appreciate it everybody. Will be kind of leading today’s discussion, with these two folks here, Jay, who’s Vice President of Asset Management Operations, new title for Jay, congrats Jay, over at Standard Solar who manages many distributed projects across the country. And also, Bala will be joining the conversation as well, senior manager of asset optimization at Arevon, deep technical expertise in operations engineering. And yeah, looking forward to the discussion. Really appreciate those who participated in the survey as well. I think it’s a great way for us to start thinking about, you know, really getting out of the weeds of the day to day and kind of getting out of that, thinking from a high level, you know, what’s going on with our industry? You know, what are the commonalities that we’re seeing across our segment? And so really today is, we wanted to, we did this survey over the last couple of weeks. I’m gonna give a quick overview of the results of it, and we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the findings. And so, one of the big questions that we asked with the survey for folks was really around industry headwinds and what was gonna be the biggest impact. Policy regulation, regulatory changes was kind of number one, followed by supply chain, equipment reliability issues, and then interconnection queues, things that are pretty fairly evenly distributed. In this survey, we also talked a lot about growth, right? Where are we going to see the biggest growth in our segment this year? Most folks thought it was going to be kind of in the battery side of things, right? Battery, energy storage, asset management, O&M. We all know about repowering aging assets. That’s going to be a big growth area as well. And I think people are also thinking a lot about predictive analytics, right? All the technology that goes into that, trying to look around the curve of what’s failing and how we can get ahead of that. We also talked a lot about, we asked respondents about operational challenges. Kind of the top challenges and evenly distributed were around construction quality, QAQC, inverter failures, module degradation, underperformance, things that asset managers, asset owners all know very deeply, and it was very well represented within the survey. Workforce, we also talk to folks about what they’re seeing with workforce challenges and how they’re addressing it. I thought it was pretty interesting that almost a vast majority of respondents really plan to invest in training and upskilling of labor and with a little bit less, but still a fair amount of folks looking to leverage automation like drones or robotics to support those challenges of the workforce. There are some barriers that we see in regards to workforce that a response really noted. The biggest ones being competition for skilled technicians, rising labor costs, and prevailing wage requirements. From a budgetary standpoint, we asked folks kind of what their expectations were in twenty twenty six. Over sixty percent of folks who responded to the survey expect O&M budgets to increase in twenty twenty six. Big things that are driving that are labor and travel and degradation of retiring systems. And really, only about twenty percent of folks thought that that was going down into twenty twenty six. Technology adoption was another thing we asked respondents about. Know, there are obviously, you know, AI is obviously kind of the dominant force, right, as far as leading technology for adoption. Digital twins are things that are growing quite rapidly in various different platforms and usage of drones for inspections, whether preventative or diagnostic or highly selected. But trying to implement those, there are challenges. And we did ask folks like, hey, what is the big thing that’s preventing you from implementing these technologies? I think to no surprise, I think integration complexity was the overwhelming kind of driver there. And then obviously costs associated with those technologies being adopted. Equipment reliability, right? Things are breaking and breaking often. Inverters to, I think no one’s surprise were identified as kind of a top equipment category with the most downtime, right? Almost ninety percent of folks saw that as the biggest issue. And that increased the most between twenty twenty four and twenty twenty six. And folks are really seeing that, you know, predicting that those replacement cycles of failed equipment is going to be a huge reliability challenge into twenty twenty six with over eighty percent of folks aligning with that. We ask folks about storage, right? Storage is growing, right? But it’s been a big topic. I mean, time we go to a new conference, it feels like everyone’s only talking about storage. I think for the composition of folks who answered the survey, there was kind of a wide breadth of folks that include storage within their portfolio represented here. And some of the other findings we found from the survey, wanted to highlight some of the big concerns that were noted kind of across the answers, whether that be qualitative or quantitative results. Labor and pricing was obviously a big concern as discussed earlier. Technical risk around transformers, those lead time for replacements, other associated issues with aging assets continue to be a concern. Storage availability and curtailment, right? Managing this new asset class is something that is keeping a lot of folks awake at night. And obviously, kind of to the start of twenty twenty five and going into twenty twenty six, of market dynamics. We’re seeing ITC being sunset, all the downstream effects of that around, how projects are being financed and going in or out of portfolios, creating a lot of concern for asset owners, managers on what to do next. Well, I’ve done a lot of talking, and I’m totally fine with that, but I wanted to kind of bring in the panelists here to talk a little bit more about some of the real big themes we saw within survey results that we got from respondents. And kind of one of the big ones, as I highlighted earlier, was around inverter reliability. That was a noted concern. It’s something we all know about. It’s always been kind of an issue and it still feels like it’s kind of one of the top concerns for folks. Over eighty, ninety percent of respondents said that that was a primary cause of downtime with kind of those replacement cycles and predicting that being a major challenge in twenty twenty six. And so, you know, kind of a question for the panelists here, with kind of eighty percent of folks predicting that inverter replacement is a top challenge for twenty twenty six. Are we seeing this as a kind of a shift in how we approach life cycle management of projects? And is repair being kind of an obsolete function, right, in favor of being more proactive and looking at repowering. I guess I’ll Do you want to take a stab at it? Sure. Why not? Yeah. So, nice to be on the panel. Appreciate the opportunity. Inverters from my perspective always, I mean, there’s a workhorse of the systems. So they’re always the ones that are going to be if your inverters aren’t working, similarly if your panels aren’t working, you’re not getting your energy, you’re not generating money. So they are the workhorse, they are the critical element, they are the weak link in the chain, so to speak. There’s a lot of other components in that series but from a technological perspective, effectively those have the most moving parts as it relates to the operating of the facility and systems. There’s moving parts in the sense of IGBTs and capacitor banks and those kind of things that do have, in some cases you have filters and HVAC and that kind of stuff. So those elements all kind of add up to inverter reliability. We do on the center solar side we’re primarily on the C&I side. A lot of our assets in the inverter space are decentralized inverters. String inverters you call it but we see a lot of the same kind of failures at the string level that you also have at the central inverter level. And the only differentiator for us is with a string you can swap it out a little bit easier than you can with central. We’ve done some of those and that’s big undertaking, weeks of planning, safety elements, crane, that kind of stuff. But it’s the same parts and components that fail and every manufacturer approaches a little differently. And so if we’re talking about reliability, right, I’ve always been a big proponent of ensuring that the quality of the asset, inverter assets you’re getting you know, are that highest quality, highest tier. And sometimes that’s challenging, particularly as we’re talking about one big beautiful bill and projects with cliffs and trying to get projects to the finish line and, return on investment for tax equity and all those things, it becomes very challenging to kind of steer the ship, particularly from an O and M asset owner’s perspective of hey, this inverter is gonna cause you some potential liability issues. There may be other opportunities. But if you have to go back to the drawing board with your design, that may not be an option. So what do you do? You’ve to figure out what other vehicles you have at your disposal to steer the ship in the right direction. That could be looking at added costs for repowering in the future. Assume those costs. Is that inverter product, is that manufacturer gonna be around for ten, twenty, thirty, you know, thirty five years? To that point, you know, extending warranties on the, you know, on the inverter assets can be really useful, you know, as a great vehicle to kind of ensure that reliability though, you still may in that situation if that asset is obsolete, you seem to have availability issues. So it kind of all comes to that. I’ve joked around with a bunch of people at Solarplaza over the past and talk about stuff but availability is a very mature discussion for this industry. And we need to make sure we’re as O&M providers realistic with the assumptions for what availability is for these assets. Don’t know, Bali, you got anything to add to that? Hey, thanks Jay and nice to be on this webinar with you all. Hope you all are having a good morning or afternoon or evening, wherever you’re from. A lot of good points from Jay here. Right? I will try not to repeat whatever he said, but I think there are a few things. I think one of the key things being the quality of the the inverter OEM, you know, what’s our expect what’s their expectancy of staying in business for a long time because most of our projects have a really long PPA, right? So, like, we do expect those companies to support us through the life of the PPA. That is a key thing. Invertors rightly saw a collection of power electronics. Right? So, like, they are the probably one of the most stressed components in the site, and they tend to fail. And there are a couple of things. One is reliability is one thing, right? But the ability of the vendor to support spare parts as it means something fails, the lead time for spare parts and whatnot, right? I think that is pretty important. It is also very important for the owner, asset owner, asset operator, to have a good understanding of their inverter and have a decent idea of what they expect to fail, working in tandem with the OEM, come up with the recommended like a spare part strategy just so they can have something in stock while they’re waiting on the spare part lease time, right? I think that is one of the key things. There are a few things that you could do from a predictive maintenance standpoint, like monitoring temperature and whatnot. It also depends on the weather conditions in which that inverter is installed. So that is one thing. The next thing is the serviceability. Obviously, I think Matt will get to that portion later, but, you know, we definitely want our labor, the technician on-site, to be able to troubleshoot and fix is the training programs which the OEM has to train to train the the workforce, right, to be able to make them enable them to, like, troubleshoot and fix the order. So that is another key piece, which I think. And, yeah, I’ll I’ll pause there, and I’ll, you know, hand it over to Matt. Well, I I think that’d be great. Oh, go for it, Jay. Yeah. Well, one thing I picked up on was, you know, you talked about the temperature. And, you know, it was funny. We had tried to implement some statistical analyses to determine if there was a correlation between inverter failure and temperature. And we looked at ambient as well as internal temperatures and could not get to a benchmark that really would would would leave towards that pushing that predictive maintenance, you know, like so I don’t know if you’ve had more success in kinda what those metrics are, but yeah, we we we looked at a bunch of data and really, you know, I think it may come down to the data points and the accuracy of those data points and, like, how granular it comes in at. But I’d be curious to kinda hear your perspective on on that. And, I know trying to tie back to that, you know, how do we get, you know, how do we get ahead of it. Right? Because if you can get ahead of a lot of the elements that we’re talking about, like, inverter issues are always gonna be issues, but pushing that envelope of getting more reactive and rather less reactive, more preventative with it, then, you know, spare spare lead time, those kind of things, you have time now to start thinking about that. But yeah. Yep. Definitely a good question there, Jay. Right? There are a few things which you can still do from a predictive analysis standpoint, and I would say, like, eighty percent of it is how proactive are you about? How soon are you reacting to something? Right? But from a predictive standpoint, you are right that we definitely need detailed data points from the inverter, which are lead indicators of what has to come, right? IGBTs, you know, for example, they should not see a huge range of operating temperature. So it should be maintained in a very narrow temperature range in order not to affect the reliability of it. So if you have temperature sensors measuring temperature of IGBT, some of the power electronics, and temperature sensors from different cabinets of the inverter. The inverter manufacturer usually has like a D rate enabled just to make sure the parts do not fail under stress. So it is important for the owner and operator to understand what those limits are. And if you are trending, like, let’s say, a bunch of inverters for these data points, and if you see a certain bunch stressed more and, you know, trending higher to a high temperature more before it starts de rating, before it eventually fails, right? I think that is a data point that we can monitor over time to see, you know, what s going on, right? That where you work with the OEM and also your O and M technician to see what might be going on and what you could be doing. Like maintenance is also a key part of this, right? Like cleaning the filters and dust intrusion. What s the OEM recommendation? I think that is key. But then also like wherever your inverter is located, you know, it might be a harsher environment. So it might need a, you know, a more prescriptive maintenance and a higher frequency of maintenance than what the OEM might recommend. So those are some of the things that you get from experience, you know. So those are the few things that you could look at. Yeah. We have we have looked at, you know, I have been pushing for a while now trying to get, you know, particularly harsher environment, trying to get the inverters out of direct sunlight because if you can help reduce some of that ambient temperature, at least you’re helping kinda reduce some of the, you know, internal temperature of the devices. You raise a good point on IGBTs. I mean, I think, yeah, if we have the data points on the IGBTs, I I like what you’re saying there. There’s probably gotta be some trends there that you could you could kinda hone in on. I would like to think a lot of times manufacturers should kinda give you know, have those start stop gaps in place with the D rates, but not all of them do. You know, and and, you know, having SLAs with the manufacturers too that kinda correlate to, like, you know, the technical component level. But the other element, you know, as we were talking about IGBTs, think is useful is if there’s a higher level capacity on them. So, you know, a big thing we were pushing at, and I’m sure, know, importantly in the C and I space, you know, I can’t speak so much on the utility scale side, but it’s been a lot of, you know, pushing the envelope on the DC AC capacity and trying to get as much, you know, PV in the ground as possible. And then, you know, you’re you’re you have all this capacity that’s built up and you’re jamming it in the inverter and those IGBTs basically gotta dump all that as heat or whatever else is there. If you’re going with a cheap product and those IGBTs aren’t designed for that capacity, you’re putting more heat in there. But getting those specifics from the manufacturer and really looking from an engineering perspective like what that product is going to look like, again, it kind of goes back to that, well, manufacturer says it is going to work for it, but if that product keeps failing and it’s designed for that capacity rating even though you still have a warranty that’s valid, it’s like, well, you’re still paying for it in the end, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. You know, yeah, I think I think it’s a it’s a great conversation around kinda like temperature signals and how we can be more predictive. But, you know, ultimately, you know, when it comes to, you know, folks in the field, right, those are Those are the resources that we’re really deploying to help kind of remediate these issues. And workforce upskilling and automation was like a big theme in this survey. And, you know, a lot of folks were, you know, majority of folks were looking to invest in upscaling technicians. And then a little bit less folks were looking into automation tools like robotics and drones, you know, with kind of those two things happening, right, with ninety percent of folks doubling down on upscaling and then half are kind of turning to robotics and drones, how are we thinking about balancing the investment in these two areas? They’re both very expensive, but they can complement each other. There’s some synergies. And how are we kind of thinking about applying the elements of automation to augment that work, whether that be in the field or maybe in an operating center. Paula, I’m curious to hear from you kind of your perspective on that. No, I think you used the right set of words there, balance and augmentation, because the technology, you know, whatever the type of automation technology there is, whether it’s drones or your digital twin or whatever it is, right? Like it has its own advantages. Then obviously the labor on-site, end of the day, they are the ones that are going to like fix issues for us and then, bring back equipments online. Right? So that portion is purely human. So there is definitely, like, huge value there. My perspective there is when it comes to drones or any digitized or automation technologies, finding issues and prioritizing issues, right, based on the energy impact and also the corresponding revenue impact. If we were to provide a prioritized list of, hey, these are all the issues, right, and make the life easier for the workforce on-site to fix them, I think that’s how you complement each other, right? Currently, the technology has not evolved, and at least I don’t see it going to a place where it can start fixing issues. So we are definitely dependent on our, you know, smart folks on-site to fix issues for us. So that’s how I see it. Yeah. I mean, think there’s definitely some elements there. I mean, I can agree with everything everything Bob was saying there, but the you know, from a DG’s perspective, the issues we primarily have, I think, are you can’t just throw money at everything. And a lot of times it’s the implement this solution and this is the next best thing, this is going to fix all your problems and that’s how it’s always sold. And unfortunately, reality is it’s one piece of the puzzle. You know, death by a thousand cuts, death by a thousand different module type issues and inverter under performance type issues. And so, know, I know we’re gonna talk probably a little bit more about data, but the elements I think that relate to the labor side of it are, you know, you you have to have the data systems in place so you can really engage your resources properly and efficiently. You know, we wanna keep we gotta keep costs down. We gotta manage our budgets, but we can’t, you know, look at everything and say, like, this is gonna solve all the problems. Unfortunately, and, I’ve had projects where you do one, two, three, four different types of remediations to try and solve for what you think is the main root cause, and then you keep going deeper. And it’s another root cause and another root cause, compounding issues. You know, that’s not everything, but, you know, it’s it’s that cognizant, you know, it’s cognizant element of, like, where we are in the troubleshooting process, and then where are we best deploying those resources. I kinda segue a little bit, but getting back to the labor portion of it, the the labor pieces, you know, the way I look at it is historically for us has been very useful having, you know, eyeballs on sites, on data acquisition, looking at the data systems. With AI, with, you know, digital twin infrastructure, you know, there will be a world where, you know, you’re not gonna need so many eyeballs looking at the sites because an artificial intelligent system is gonna be able to detect those anomalies in some capacities faster than a human can. And where the human intervention, where that’s gonna be important as it relates is going to be to evaluate that that AI system is doing its job right. So it’s kind of that element of like, I don’t see it as reducing so much headcount. It’s more optimization and creation of escalation of issues, more management of those issues. But then on the field side, you know, like Paul was saying, I mean, we have to have the guys on the field. That’s not changing, you know. And if anything, we need more guys. We need more apprentices. We need more people that are, hungry to get out there and go help us turn wrenches. I mean, lot of the industry is frankly selling new projects and new products, but there needs to be a better focus guys in the field that are helping to keep the systems up and running, which is the majority of the work on these assets. You go and design a project for a twenty five year life, but you’re only really putting two, three, four, five years in the front to make it last that long. You got years and years and years of people that need to come together to make that dream come alive. And kind of piggybacking off the spokes in the field, there a lot of requirements that are mandating higher wages, right, in the form of prevailing wages, which is fantastic for technicians and I think for industry. A lot of folks on the survey noted that as prevailing wages, a concern from a budgetary standpoint, right, thinking about that. Jay, how are you guys thinking about prevailing wage from the perspective of how you’re budgeting for O and M moving forward in twenty twenty six and beyond? I appreciate that. Prevailing wages is a cost. Right? I think the cost element for us really, I don’t think it’s so much on the labor side. Right? A lot of the technicians that are doing the labor, these guys are, you know, journeyman electrician, master electrician, medium voltage, you know, certified electrician or equivalent. Like that labor type of labor is already, I would say, generally well above kind of whatever that prevailing wage rate should be. Where we see in kind of the industry and what I see and kind of what I have to deal a lot with is just kind of the elements associated with ensuring compliance. So, you know, the documentation we’re sending a contractor out there making sure that, you know, we are compliant and we’re, we’re not avoiding any of the contractual elements for tax equity and ensuring that the tax equity providers are comfortable with the work and making sure the contractors are paid. So I mean I’d love to get to a point where we’re putting more money in the pockets of the guys actually turning the wrenches, and think that prevailing wage does kind of get us in that, but I think the larger issue is it’s like that skill gap. And you know, having prevailing wages incentivizing the sensor you get more people, but you can’t just bring someone in and assume that they’re gonna have twenty years of experience and not kill them, frankly, kill themselves on-site. It’s really scary. But out of all, I’m really curious to see how you guys approach this and what your influence is here. Yeah. I think my my I guess just to add context. Right? Look. My experience is primarily utility scale. From a PWA perspective, I think my understanding is PM labor is still your regular rate, and then corrective maintenance is what is PWA. Think, overall, I think it is good in the sense of incentivizing talented people to be paid appropriately because I think that population existing and growing is pretty important for the industry to take care of its assets. I think it’s a good thing, but I I I definitely see that definitely adding some, you know, cost to the to the O and M budgets. You know? So that that’s the that’s my perspective there. And I mean, if I’m being honest, right, I think each one of the contract is different and each owners treat their contracts differently. It depends on who we are working with and whatnot. But it is not a substantial increase in price from what the labor has already been paid, is what my understanding there is. So it’s definitely an increase in O and M budget, but it’s still manageable, in my opinion. Bala, I wanna piggyback on that and question about the you know, because a lot of I think we talked about this a little bit. A lot of our O and M contracts are kinda more T and M. You being on more, I think, utility scale side, you know, it’s kinda easy for us to manage that PWA because it’s like, I’m looking at one case, one activity, one mobilization, and then it’s just managing the labor against associated with that. How do you see that being different from a perspective if it’s like a turnkey type contract? Right? And then that turnkey type contract is doing corrective, you know, those type activities versus just the routine maintenance. Yeah. It is definitely given the number of items, right, given the number of corrective maintenance activities, you know, that the team has to do on a regular basis, There is definitely a lot to track, and obviously, I don’t think we can just do it, you know, do it in a spreadsheet. Right? So it definitely needs a system. It definitely needs a process. It definitely needs training from an input standpoint, from the labor working on it, and then, like, someone validating the data and make sure everything is looking good. Right? So there is definitely a system, process, and training, which I see is key in actually managing the data that we’re supposed to maintain. Battery storage was another large theme within the survey. A lot of folks are seeing that as a big growth opportunity, right? Battery storage O and M, they think that that segment’s going to grow faster than on the solar, than on the PV side of things. But there’s still some challenges with that growth. A lot of folks noted challenges around software controls, technician expertise, right, with this new asset class, you know, relating to all the things we’ve been talking about. And so, know, kind of, you know, since the, know, responses are very equally split on those kind of those hurdles. But I’m kind of curious, like, Bala, for asset managers, thinking about those two different hurdles around software controls, technician expertise, where do you think folks should prioritize their time today, especially when they’re thinking about this being a big growth target and being able to hit that and to excel into that segment? I’m curious if you have any thoughts. No, I think it’s a good question. Something I think the industry should look into more, right? One of the things is obviously the controls because is BEST is definitely a newer technology. I think at least in RD1, the oldest BEST asset we have was commissioned like five years ago, I think. Right? It’s still new, right? When it comes to so there are like challenges with the technology itself, right? When you take the battery cells, SOC estimation, understanding what SOC the battery is at any point in time, it is an estimation at best. It is an estimate based on a probabilistic model at best, which some OEMs do a good job of, which some don’t, right? So is a challenge there. And then based on the technology and how those battery modules are integrated, there is challenges with balancing active versus passive. Is the balancing automated or is that manual labor, right? The challenges vary depending on the technology as well as the OEM developing the technology. So there is a lot to be uncovered there, and there is a lot for the industry workforce to be caught up there to understand the controls. I would definitely say controls is a very key piece to successfully manage best project, and I think we should continue our focus there. With growing like in the past, you know, we had an MC and NCA and all those chemistries, and currently we see LFP is being commercialized a lot and deployed a lot, right? Like the SOC chemistry is like the chemistry is definitely a little bit different, even though both of them are lithium. So I think training is also key there. When it comes to the labor who are working on that stuff, I think just speaking from, like, an RD1 standpoint, like, we contract we have an LDSC with the OEM, who is also our O and M provider, so we don’t necessarily have to worry about, like, contracting an O and M to take care of our our best projects. So the OEM who already knows the technology, who already knows the reliability challenges, who already knows how to service the equipment, you know, so they are the ones managing the site. That makes things a little bit easier for us. But I understand that’s not always the case, depending on the contract in the OEM, right? So that is definitely a challenge, and I don’t think there is a lot of experience in that area and definitely upskilling of the labor to be highly skilled enough to take care of issues, understand the systems better, even like spare parts strategy. Like, we really don’t know, right? Like, those are definitely some of the challenges that we need to think about. And I think I feel like control standpoint, are a little bit more mature compared to, you know, upscaling the labor standpoint. So I think as an industry, there is some work to be done there. Yep. Yeah. And I think piggyback on that is, you know, agree with pretty much all those points. The the control elements from my perspective, probably one of the most it’s really controlling data, I think, is one of the most frustrating things. While I wasn’t aware that the SOC is a probabilistic, you know, estimation, that’s news for me, but that’s great. I’m learning things. But the what’s I think really frustrating, you know, and there was some discussion, I think, on the presentation here about ensuring we’re having good handoffs and the labor side, labor component, as well as the commissioning team that’s setting these batteries up, you know, you make sure you have good data systems in place and good data, particularly for us with, like, solar plus storage. You know, we we aren’t doing standalone right now, but we know it’s coming. And, you know, trying to get the solar system operating optimally while in parallel getting a battery that also includes EMS, fire suppression, HVAC control, all those things, and get all that data reporting and ensure you’re optimizing your charge discharge with your peak shave or clip capture, whatever. Right? Those those things all go into that and are it’s it’s it’s one of the most difficult challenging things to get to get right, and it takes months. It takes months and months and months to optimize and fine tune. And, you know, I think it’s the battery industry is kinda where solar was, you know, ten years ago, maybe fifteen years ago right now, and and it’s it’s it’s incredible how fast it’s coming and how much quicker I think it’s gonna continue to come. But Bal, you raised a good point about the labor side of it. And that’s I think the thing that really scares me is because, you know, we’re almost beholden to the integrators and the manufacturers to make sure that we’re getting the right product and that they can continue to service it. You know, a lot of battery assets really it’s a ten year product, which, you know, is on the scale of solar, not, you know, not as long, but your bay your your benchmark are a significant portion of the revenue on the performance of these battery systems. And if that battery is not working, you know, it’s like I mean, it’s just compounded losses. It’s it’s unbelievable. It’s staggering how much how much impact it has. So but there’s there’s a lot of maturity that needs to happen. Yeah. The the one point I would add to what you said, Jay, is upskilling not upskilling, but, like, training program. Right? Batteries are obviously energy dense systems, which obviously has potential for fire, right? Something were to happen. I think developing a good emergency response program for your site team, having a good operation center support, right, that monitors the system. And it is also very key to train your local, you know, like fire stations, right, on like, you know, if something had happened, right, like definitely like do drills and whatnot training. So I think there is training from a lot of friends, from like managing the operations of the battery from like a maintenance standpoint, optimizing the performance standpoint, but then also the safety aspect of it is also a very important part of this training and upskilling of the necessary stakeholders here. Yeah, integrating battery storage, very complex. But more broadly speaking, integrating technology is also a big complexity and barrier within kind of the results of the survey. That was something that a lot of folks noted as being a barrier to integrating new tech into kind of asset management. And, know, I think we’ve all had our experiences integrating different levels of technology within our segments and teams, but, you know, in all the pains that come with it. But, know, Bala, I’m just, you know, what kind of advice do you have for an asset owner who’s looking to integrate a new tool, maybe it’s into their, you know, into their existing systems or data platforms from from the perspective of, like, asset management for success. Yeah. I think I’ll be reiterating a few pointers that Jay mentioned in previous answer. That’s alright. Like, I think we need to know the type of equipments we have, the type of systems we have. So sure, we may have that information lying in drawings and maintenance records, which are probably like just disjoint. So it is important to digitize that information, right? So I think that is very key, whether it’s Digital Twin, right? I think Digital Twin has been around for a while, and one of the more common challenges you see at something like that, right, like a unified asset optimization platform, right, is availability of metadata, right, the type of equipments we have. Data standardization, data mapping, right? You know, in the case of a traditional project, like, let’s say there is a combiner under an inverter. Is combiner one that is being shown in our performance platform, is it really combiner one in on field, right? So there are a lot of challenges there. Obviously, there will always be, like, data issues, sensor issues on field leading to data issues and data gaps. So end of the day, like, of the of a brilliant software tool you may have, it is all data in. Like, the quality of data in is pretty key. So I think that is definitely controllable, but that, you know, I do understand that is a challenging thing. So that can make things interesting, right, and challenging. Right? So, you people hear about a new tool in the market, which is pretty good and has all the insights that you can make best use of, right? But if you don’t have your data in a proper place, like, then, you know, you won’t be able to get as much value out of that tool. It is the case for Digital Twin. I would say that data is even more key and paramount for training or fine tuning any of the general purpose AI models, you know, with the technology basically maturing every single day, right? It is very key if, let’s say, you know, we want to come up with a predictive AI, right, that basically predicts, like, what type of spare parts we need to forecast and stock and, you know, what type of equipment reliability issues we can forecast. Like, if we don’t have a history, maintenance history and failure history that we can feed to the AI model, then it is going to be difficult. So integration is always a challenge, and I think that is where the asset owner and operator need to work with the technology provider to see, okay, what are the what is some you know, what’s the data that we have? What are we working with? How can we still get the best out of this tool? So that is that is always going to be a challenge, in my opinion, and I would say let’s all start with the data and standardizing data. And I would just add to that. The biggest thing we’re learning is just kind of with existing data systems and obsolescence. So there is some elements of data systems are getting better. Digital twin has been around, like Paul was saying, for a few years. But if you’re not designing your systems nowadays with kind of that future optimization in mind or future digitization in mind, you’re gonna have to go and spend more money if you wanna get to that point in the future. You can’t really integrate AI systems if your data is coming from multiple multiple points of of of, you know, interest, and you don’t know if it’s combiner one or combiner two, like Val was saying. So yeah, I would just agree basically everything Val was saying. It’s really got to be put on the front end, but we are seeing that there’s a lot of good products out there that are making it more efficient and effective, they’re thinking about these things. And you know, I encourage definitely people that are, you know, on the webinar today to go explore those options and, know, work towards ensuring that, you know, their assets are ready for that transition. Because it’s it’s it’s important. You know? It is important and, you know, resources are important to manage here and that you can’t you can’t and this can’t be afraid to have better data quality. I mean, there’s there’s no excuse for a better data quality. Yeah, data quality management being paramount for that sort of integration. I’ve got one last theme, one last area I wanna chat about really quickly before we go into Q and A. One last thing as it relates to the survey is around kind of reality versus expectations. As it relates to pricing and scope, we actually had one of the respondents in the survey talked about kind of using standardized SLAs and how that can be challenging with a diverse portfolio, right? Maybe you have a tight SLA for response on a small project and how that expectation can be really challenging. And I hear that and sometimes that gives me, I understand it, sometimes it gives me a little pain because I know that standardization is really key for scaling efficiently, but there’s so much nuance with the portfolio, especially in the DG segment. And so I’m kind of thinking, you know, I wanted to kind of see your thoughts on this, Jay, about how you’re thinking about site specific O and M obligations like guarantees and if you think that’s something that’s a feasible solution that our industry should be looking more at as we’re getting more mature. Yeah, no, that’s a tough question. SLAs, you know, on the DG side is they’re expensive. You know, we usually don’t have much of a budget for performance, you know, performance guarantees. And though we try to manage the SLAs, manage expectations, it’s, you know, it’s hard when you’ve got, you know, multiple vendors. Even if you’re doing a, you know, single contract type thing and, you know, single turnkey or whatever, it’s hard to manage all those expectations with those vendors and, you know, get the get the right results. You know, the you can put an SLA in there for pretty much everything. You know, industry standard, I think, is really like time to site or, you know, time to react. Right? So, you know, there are some availability SLAs, I think, in the uteroscale world, but, you know, if it’s like you’re on our side, like you’re troubleshooting an issue, it’s that how quickly can we get boots on the ground to, you know, do something. And it’s it’s kinda frustrating because a lot of times you put the boots on the ground, you don’t get anything. So you need to you need to empower the technicians. You need to work with a company, empower the the service providers. The guys that, you know, have been doing this for ten, twenty years, like, that those are the guys that can tell you what’s wrong with your system. They gotta, you know, in some cases it’s nuance, like you were saying, Matt. Like, we gotta look at all the different elements and we need to be prepared that it’s not one size fits all. It’s gonna be, you know, two or three different visits. So, you know, I think data systems do a good job of helping to kind of pinpoint where to start looking, and that can I think you can probably tailor some more unique SLAs around how to better, you know, correlate where to where to get that root cause based off that? But for us, it’s tough, and I think it’s just gonna continue to be tough until we get, you know, better training, better resources out in the field. Well, thank you guys for the those those I really appreciated the discussion on those questions. I thought that was fantastic. We’ve got just a few more minutes here and I think we could go do a few of the questions in the Q and A. We probably only have time for like one or two. So I’m digging into the questions right now. I’m gonna see if there’s any good ones that might be fruitful for the group here. Let’s see. Oh, here’s a good one around repowering. We talked just a little bit about repowering, but I think this is such a big topic, generally speaking, for the industry. Question is kind of from our perspective, what are the biggest, what are the most typical technical traps when you’re thinking about repowering a legacy PV or best site? I’ll leave that to either Jay or Bala, whoever wants to take a stab first. All right, Jay. I think repowering a utility scaling motor is definitely challenging given the cost of it and also the, you know, what’s available in the market, right? So if you’re trying to repower, let’s say an inverter which was installed in twenty fourteen, it is definitely an inverter which had a thousand volt DC, right? Right now we have fifteen hundred volt DC. So there is an electrical compatibility issue, right? And then like, it’s, you know, like what’s available in the market, right? I think that’s one of the first challenges. And then once find something that’s available, which is usually pretty hard, right, then you need to think about, okay, what are the mechanical compatibility issues that we need to work around? And more often than not, depending on the size of the project and then the O and M budget, especially the major maintenance budget, right? Projects that were built back in the day, like, oil and budgets are pretty crazy, right? Like it was probably pennies to what is actually required to maintain uptime on those projects. So those budget challenges also makes financing that repo challenging. I would say, like, just to summarize, definitely finding a good fit for the older unit, electrical wise, compatibility wise, and then also like construction wise, right, those type of stuff. And then some of the technical challenges, once you have once you have found something, once you have installed it, right, like data integration to your SCADA and whatnot. So that’s definitely a challenge. And also, like, the financing of it, you know, that is we need to get creative there and probably need additional approvals to actually make that happen to keep that project humming. One other question from the group here around asset optimization and kind of thinking about after warranty periods, kind of teasing a little bit of repowering, but wondering aside from that, if you guys have any kind of insights on optimization of health after that period specifically. Yeah, that’s a good question. It could be a little bit of some factor, but I think, you know, the optimization could really stem to that repowering world. It really kinda comes down to where you are in the project life cycle. You know, if if, you know, if you’re budgeting out replacements of certain things or components, You know, you can definitely make things limp along. You can you know, we’ve run issues where, like, you’re you don’t have modules of that same type available. So now what do you do? Do you gotta take you know, some of those strings gotta be offline, but not efficient strings offline. You can’t get all the panels you need. Doesn’t necessarily make sense to put new panels in, but you can take older panels, repurpose strings, rearrange strings to kinda make kind of that that up. It’s it’s a lot of different recipes and kind of playing out what your options are. You know, the the for us, it’s probably more relevant to focus on the bigger ticket items. So, you know, if, you know, if it’s a module type thing, you know, it it’s really you gotta get out there and you gotta identify where your problems are first. Get it in front of the module manufacturers because, you know, if you’re an asset five, six, seven years old, you probably don’t have panels anymore. So you gotta try and figure out, you know, what you can do, and maybe, you know, maybe if it’s bad enough, right, then, you know, you can definitely go to some degree after those module manufacturers and, you know, hit them for some of the damages that that, you know, they’ve caused. But, yeah, it’s it’s challenging. Optimization is is is important, but, you know, I think to Val’s point about the repowering side, if you can find a way to find a product that works, it may not be ideal. Right? It may not be ideal. But if you can find a product that works and is reliable, that’s gonna be your best solution. Thanks for that, Jay. Yeah, I was just Oh, sorry, Paula, I might have to cut you off here. That’s alright. Go for it. Go for I think we need to wrap up Q and A. I think Anna, I’m not sure who’s I think we have a survey raffle winner to announce. Is that correct? Is that next on the It’s not as fun as your discussion, but of course I think that’s also exciting for people joining. So let’s give it a chance as well. I see a lot of questions coming in still, so I’ll leave you guys the chance to catch up after the webinar with people. We’ll share the details, so keep them coming. But before we jump into the actual winner announcement, I just want to thank you, Bala, Jay, Matt. It’s really interesting panel discussion. I think there were a lot of really interesting insights that you dig out from this report so far. And of course, thank you everyone for the input that you provided. But now we should have a drum base, or how you call it, drum running, since we should be announcing the winner. And we did raffle before the webinar just to see who it’s gonna be. We were very excited, like a game, and we got Thomas *** winning the free ticket to our asset management conference in San Diego in April. I’m just curious, do we have Tom with us actually? Tom, if you are here with us at the webinar, please send us the reaction. If not, we will still reach out to you afterwards. And I am sorry for everyone who tried to win but didn’t win. We’re still looking forward to meeting you in San Diego. But in the meantime, thank you everyone, especially our dear panelists and Matt for moderating so well. It was a very interesting discussion, and I wish you all to have a beautiful rest of the day, wherever you are, is it the evening or the afternoon, have a good lunch Have a good morning continue for you, and yeah, we see you hopefully in San Diego and let us know if you are interested more details about the event to also meet the guys there but also the recording will be shared with you slides as well with the findings so have a good day all!