JOB: Solarcentury Reporting Analyst
Type of contract: Permanent, Full time
Location: London office
Solarcentury is one of the most respected solar companies in the world. Founded in 1998, we have been around since the early days of the solar industry and have been part of the evolution that has made PV the attractive investment it is today. We have put solar on a greater variety of sites than any other company in the industry, and have won multiple awards for product innovation.
With a pipeline over 3,5GW under development and with more than 800MW developed and connected in the solar industry, Solarcentury is one of the leading companies in the sector. We develop, design and install, operate and manage commercial, industrial and utility scale solar, and have started to invest in our own developed and constructed projects.
We are a big believer in helping solar PV change our world for the better and contribute 5% of our net profits every year to the charity we founded, SolarAid, which aims to eradicate kerosene lamps from Africa by 2020.
Solarcentury has offices in the UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Panama, Chile and Mexico. All our customers benefit from our experience in terms of engineering quality, superior yields and sheer breadth of deployment.
Job details:
The role is based in the Analysis team which has responsibility for supporting teams across Solarcentury with Plant performance and Performance Liability analytical tasks. This includes calculating the performance of our Plants, understanding the impact of planned and unplanned maintenance, and reporting all aspects of our operation both to external clients for externally owned projects and internally for SC owned Plants.
The purpose of the role is to provide reports to the operations team and the rest of the company concerning the contractual performance of our solar PV plants. These reports ensure that contractual obligations are met and help to set the priorities of the O&M team. Ultimately, this ensures the PV power plant generation is maximised while ensuring operational efficiency for Solarcentury Operation and Maintenance services.
The Reporting Analyst role will undertake analysis using various monitoring and analysis tools such as MySQL databases, Influx DB, R, Python as well as the standard MS office applications. They will use a wide variety of tools including PV monitoring portals, data processing scripts and desktop applications. This will also be cross-matched with reports from the fault ticketing system and uploaded to our reporting system.
The analyst will track and report on data quality issues and will work with Data Analysis Team to resolve any issues encountered with the reporting system.
In addition to good technical skills, this position will need excellent attention to detail and a willingness to dig into issues to understand root causes.
Key activities and responsibilities:
Reporting
● Run regular monthly reporting process to internal and external customer audiences.
● Operational reporting to support trend analysis & fault diagnosis
● Assist in the extension and improvement of reporting systems and information management
● Check and upload site performance data from a variety of sources (monitoring platform, metering portals, client e-mails).
● Liaise with O&M team to ensure all required data is requested and received in a timely manner.
● Provide feedback on the reporting tools to help drive continuous improvement.
● Compile long-term performance testing calculations for clients.
Performance Optimisation
● Use existing and assist in developing tools to characterise current operation and identify improvement options
● Work with team on the assessment & validation of PV design modelling tools
● Academic liaison and research to ensure Solarcentury team match industry best practice
● Automation of data extraction from Web platforms and other data sources
● Work with team on development work to automate data collection and delivery into InfluxDB
Investigations
● Work with team on contractual performance testing results
● Work with team on root cause investigations and intervention tracking
● Work with team to develop new investigation tools and systemise these into regular operation
Internal client liaison and support
● Work with team on contract comprehension and distillation into performance tracking
● Work with team on contract templates – contribute to production of performance testing and O+M aspects of contracts
● Work with team on technical liaison & presentation of investigation results
Qualifications and experience:
Essential
• Degree qualified (or equivalent) in a relevant subject
• 1 year experience analysing data sets, devising and refining summary reporting methods
• Familiarity with, and/or ability to programme R, Python, VBA, C++ etc.
• Familiarity with, and/or ability with SQL programming, database administration.
• Strong excel, data visualisation and reporting skills
Desirable
• Experience of PV plant design or operation – both string and central inverter systems
• Working familiarity with PV web monitoring tools such as;
• Inaccess – Insolar, GPM, Gantner Meteocontrol SMA Webportal etc.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, technical, cross-functional team environment.
• Self-starter; must be productive with minimal direction as part of a fast paced team across system design, data analysis and task delivery.
• Strong interest in and support for environmental / social responsibility in business
• 1 year experience in the solar PV industry in a technical, engineering or analysis role.
We believe that the role could be suited to both MSc or PhD graduates and more experienced professionals, with an interest in PV and experience with databases. The team in which this role will sit has responsibility for supporting teams across the company with plant performance and performance Liability analytical tasks. This role will provide reports to the operations team and wider company concerning the contractual performance of our solar PV Plants.
The aim is for the successful candidate to start in early August to allow for a 2-3-month handover with the current incumbent.
Applicants should apply with a covering letter and a CV to sophie.lindberg@solarcentury.com.
The deadline for applications is Monday 16th July, however interviews may be scheduled in advance of this deadline, as applications come in.
