The Evolution of Challenges in Solar Asset Optimization

Blaine Sundwall works within EDF’s North American Asset Optimization group leading a team of Asset Managers and Operations staff. He joined EDF RE in 2013. He and his team are responsible for over 1.6 GW of generating assests, over 1 GW of which is solar. This includes wind, solar, and energy storage. Prior to EDF Mr. Sundwall was with Iberdrola Renewables and its predesessors for 14 years. During that time he was involved with combined and simple cycle natural gas fired generation facilities, including their start up. He was the initial operations staff when PPM moved into renewables. This allowed participation in all aspects of that business. This included initial start up of the internal O&M function, Asset Management, finance, PPA administration, and working with trading. His final role at Iberdrola was overhauling and building a new enterprise control room. This included implementation and deployment of ‘Customer Supplied Generation Imbalance’. This program self supplied the generation balancing of 14 wind facilities (over 1400 MW) with the companies owned combined cycle and simple cycle generation as well as contracted hydro and market generation.

Anand Narayanan is Vice President of Asset Management at Arevon. He brings more than a decade of experience in solar operations and maintenance and deep knowledge of the various market drivers and technology improvements happening in the solar industry. Prior to joining Arevon, Anand held various roles at First Solar Energy Services, including performance engineer and technical sales manager. At First Solar, Anand was responsible for selling third-party O&M services and brought in more than $2.5 million of annual margin via long-term O&M contracts. Prior to that, Anand was responsible for performance reporting, analysis, and operations. Anand graduated from Arizona State University with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Energy and Power Systems, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Technology for Electrical and Electronics Engineering.