On Energy Project, a company working in Northern Italy, built more than 400 solar plants, manages a portfolio of about 600 plants with O&M activities, and is now supporting Omrons after sales service for customers who lost their technical reference.
In Italy, as in many other countries, Photovoltaic incentive schemes from local government aimed to develop the market, and, approaching Grid Parity, to create the conditions for spontaneous requests for solar plants. Ten years after the first incentive scheme, the so called Conto Energia (Italian feed in incentive program set up in 2005) Solar market is mature and industrial companies ask for solar plants on the roofs of their companies: in this new market situation Omron bets on customers loyalty to catch the new opportunities and set up an efficient after sales service.
Market situation is really different from ten years ago, says Flavio Favero general manager of On Energy Project, Customers are now aware of climate changes and of the role of renewable energy to reduce environmental pollution. In many cases they already have a PV roof on their house, so they already know the tangible effect of solar power. Thats why they are now interested to install a PV plant for their Company, in most case when they need to rebuild the roof. In case of self-consumption rate of 70/75%, and, when applicable, incentives for eternit removal, the project has a return on the investment of 5 to 6 years.
Our customers ask for high quality service and high performances, to be sure to recover the investment in the expected time. Thats why on medium size plants we always install Omrons Inverter. Some examples are Berti Moto, with a 49 kW plant, the farm Il Crociere with a 70 kW plant, Latterie Venete di Vedelago, a company producing milk, with a 400 kW plant, Bassano del Grappa Sport Hall, with a 130kW plant. In all these installations we use PV Remote Pro, Omrons professional web-based tool to keep watch on the performance of the plant.
The PV market is quite different now: market consolidation requests strong partnerships with reliable technology suppliers: thats why EPC companies chose and trust Omron, a worldwide market leader for automation components, which can give support for plants with a long time life.
We have a very strong cooperation with On Energy Project, and it supports our post-sales organisation in case of failure on inverters belonging to operators which cannot be identified as Omrons direct customer. The difficult situation of solar market had dramatic consequences on the field, and many plants owners lost their technical reference. When it happens it is possible to call Omron and receive all information regarding post-sales service, says Stefano Corni, Sales Manager for Omron Environment Solution Business.
