Zen & the Art of Solar PV Maintenance

I promised myself I wouldn't write anything in this piece that was specifically about COVID-19. There's been too much interesting stuff written already.

However, I've realised that reflecting on the last eight to ten weeks of lockdown is a useful foundation for me to start this article – especially given its focus on how quality feeds into the next stage of society’s low carbon story.

Quality & the Lockdown 

For my family & me, the period of lockdown has allowed us to focus on the qualitative aspects of our lives. This includes, but is not limited to, the connections between each of us, accentuated by us all being forced into the same spaces and activities as opposed to our more individualised way of being beforehand, a greater awareness of the beauty that comes with fewer cars, birdsong, the quiet in between the noise, using our legs more and finding new places locally etc.

This emergence of a greater awareness of the beauty in the things we cannot quantify is a meditation, I’ve realised, on quality.

It is a word that has had little significance in the majority of our lives, economies and interactions over the last few decades as a globalised economy has emerged and the focus of its momentum has been on quantity, quantity and more quantity.

This has been at the expense of quality and, as many columnists have pointed out, is possibly one of the root causes for the ensuing environmental degradation, lack of biodiversity and the emergent pathways for viruses to connect with humans.

And it is this environmental crisis that we need to bring to the forefront of our actions now.

As Mark Carney so eloquently put it “we cannot self-isolate from the climate crisis.”

So, if this COVID-19 induced lockdown will lead enlightened political leaders to take the necessary actions and pre-emptively act as the science has been telling us to by decarbonising, rewilding and reducing our voracious consumption of the earths finite natural resource’s, how can we ensure that this pathway, if taken, also does not make the same mistake of following a quantitative pathway that ignores quality.

Zen & the Motorcycle

The key reason I reminded myself of this was when I recently reread “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig, originally written in the 1970s. It tells the story of the author on a motorcycle trip with his son and friends across America and his reflections on the psychological breakdown of a part of him, that he refers to as “Phaedrus”, as he tackles the question of quality from a philosophical perspective.

His musings relate to his experience of everyday life as he sees his friends and others live their lives with little or no interest in how things work. For the author, his specific focus is his motorbike.

In essence, the key message that I took away from the book, which I would recommend everyone to read, is that we are able to better understand the quality of things when we understand the systems that comprise them and are able, therefore, to respond to problems with a greater understanding, awareness and capacity.

It is this systems approach, and primary focus on quality, that has been ruminating in my brain for some time now before falling out onto the page before me via my pen (again something for which I have almost forgotten the qualitative benefits of after doing so much work on a computer.)

Quality and Renewable Generation

I think it is right to say that renewable generation investment up until now has been driven by quantity. Reflecting on the typical investment process there are a number of factors at play which need to be disaggregated and examined.

First is the life cycle of investors in renewable energy. Typically, most larger scale investments are undertaken by developers who have no long-term interest in the viability of the generation asset. I should say that there are certainly developers that I know who do take a long-term interest but my worry is that they are in the minority.

In brief, these “short-term” investors find the capital to develop and then employ an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business to build and manage the asset so it meets a minimum energy generation hurdle i.e. a specified minimum amount of energy for at least the next two years. This is so they can sell it on at a profit to another investor, with data to back up its efficacy. The story then repeats again and again until, typically, the asset ends up with a long-term investor such as a pension fund who will hold it until the end of its life say in 20 to 25 years. 

One problem with this is that every transaction is based on a quantitative measure – profit (the sale price less the cost to develop and maintain), and on an assumed level of quality which is that the system keeps producing specified energy levels.

And it is the qualitative assumption, that the system will keep producing a set amount of energy, that is put most at risk by this investment “House of Cards.” It assumes that the initial investor / developer built their system with the long-term quality of the system at its core. Yet this is not, and will not be, the case when the investment horizon is a few years. As long as the developer’s EPC can keep the asset producing enough energy for the initial period, the system will get sold and then sold again until eventually it ends up in somebody’s pension fund.

Quality & Future Energy Asset Developments

This existing system does not bode well for any country that is looking to significantly transform its energy system to low or zero carbon as it has short termism as its main driver, which sits in direct opposition to what we need - a long term, sustainable system with quality at its foundation.

We and many others in the sector are seeing the impacts of this as sites that were built in the “solar coaster” years of the feed in tariff in the UK and elsewhere start to fail. Many were built with cheap, imported, relatively unskilled labour - the consequences of a profit, short-term & quantity driven system - and are now experiencing significant electrical issues that lead to significant reductions in energy output.

We need to remember that everything we do relies on energy – and specifically electricity. Even the Internet requires electricity to run. Electricity is so important to our society that we cannot allow the vagaries of the quantity driven market dictate this shift to a low or zero carbon future. We need to realign quality at the heart of this transition.

This focus on quality reminds me of rights and responsibilities. Our society almost always talks about their rights but very rarely discusses the responsibilities required to ensure that those rights are maintained.

Again, this investment process is similar to the building industry where the three “B’s” dominate of Buy (the land), Build (the property) and B***** off (to a new project with their profits.) As the property development system does not align the interests of the property developers with those of the people who buy and rent them, we see a housing stock that evidently starts to fail within years as opposed to lasting for decades, if not hundred years plus, which is what we need.

 In the building industry there have been voices pushing for new models to realign interests whereby developers get a smaller return at the start and have a long-term interest in the yield from the properties which ensures that they build them with a high level of quality – so they keep higher rents longer into the future.

How do we get quality into the energy system?

 In my opinion we need to approach low carbon generation with the same lens, whereby all investors need to be aligned with the long-term viability of the assets that they build.

 At the moment, there does not seem to be any underlying system that is driving the requirement for quality as it is today. What we need is a conversation about how to align the long-term interests of our energy system with those who we trust to develop it.

 If we do decide to undertake a “New Green Deal”, as some political parties are proposing, mobilising trillions to decarbonise our economy, we would do well to contemplate quality first before we set off on a path to a low carbon infrastructure that starts to fail 5 to 10 years in.

 And that, would be the worst of all outcomes.

 Fraser Durham, Commercial Director, Argand Solutions