Customer testimony Valénergies

“We wanted a single system to connect up all our solar power plants”

Cyril Vezza – Director of Operations at Valénergies tells us more.

We reviewed our situation in June 2021: this showed that we were struggling to see what our PV plants were generating but above all, whether they were producing as much electricity as we anticipated.

Why Energysoft?

We used to manage our solar power plants using tools from manufacturers or suppliers. This resulted in a large number of platforms being used, which often became obsolete. So, finding a single and effective system to connect all our photovoltaic power plants became a priority.

After assessing existing options on the market, we shortlisted three possible solutions, including Energysoft. We asked them to present how their platform met our specifications together with a costed proposal. From there, we selected two companies and offered them a one-month trial at three separate power plants. Once these test periods were completed, we opted for Energysoft.

Among the aspects that swayed our decision was daily support, the responsiveness of the S4E SOFTWARE teams in implementing power plants and, of course, the platform’s user-friendly design.

What’s the situation now?

Merging all the portfolios took 3 months of almost non-stop effort as we had to recover all the data from each unit to add them to the platform. The S4E SOFTWARE teams were a real help, accompanying us from A to Z. They were even able to set up a number of specific steps for Valénergies, including a system to recover data from the SolarLog server.

Now, after more than a year, we’re satisfied with the solution. There were no nasty surprises and we’ve got what we were looking for.

If you had to choose one feature what would it be?

One of the latest developments that we like and use a lot is live calculation of reactive power.

As for us, we’re working with S4E SOFTWARE to introduce several new system features in our power plants, such as the addition of weather data and the self-consumption dimension. Self-consumption is actually a key aspect for us as it applies to 50% of our power plants, albeit a tiny proportion of the photovoltaic market nationwide in France.