Trust the industry leader in service to protect your investment

Superior Service for Power Plants

Risk-sharing scenarios:

Service solutions tailored to suit your business model

We understand that not every plant owner and operator have the same service capabilities. SMA’s risk sharing scenarios are alternative options that allow plant owners and operators to choose what level of support they need, including self-performance if desired. This maximizes the unique business models of our customers.

Each risk sharing scenario includes variances in:

Warranty length
Spare parts availability
Repair costs
Preventative maintenance

Grid Emulation™ and commissioning

Accelerate your business, mitigate risk

SMA offers a first-of-its-kind service called Grid Emulation™ that offers its partners the unique ability to significantly pull forward their commercial operation dates.

Through the use of proprietary technology, SMA can simulate the grid prior to actual grid interconnection and fully test and pre-commission the complete power path from DC to the inverter to AC. Proven on the largest plants in the world, Grid Emulation is a game changer in the way large-scale PV plants are tested and brought online.

The benefit of Grid Emulation is obvious-it arms developers and EPCs with the ability to accelerate commissioning, providing a dependable defense against project delays.

Whether it’s to mitigate risk, avoid liquidated damages due to project delays or realize greater profit from project completion ahead of schedule, SMA Grid Emulation can greatly influence project success-increasing profitability in ways other services simply can’t match.

Success begins with the essentials

Before a PV power plant can start earning returns, it needs to produce power. Commissioning, often overlooked or oversimplified, is absolutely critical to maximizing project velocity and project profitability. SMA’s global team of field service engineers—the largest in the PV industry —is available when needed and provides the industry’s most thorough commissioning process. With more than 100 inverter and system checks during the commissioning process, we make sure your SMA inverters are electrically and mechanically sound and ready for optimum performance.

Through unmatched experience, SMA has redefined the commissioning process for large-scale PV plants, which helps our partners finish on time or ahead of required commercial operation dates.

The SMA Commissioning process is one of the many reasons the world’s largest developers trust SMA for their most critical, time-sensitive projects. No one does it safer, faster or with more precision.

Preventative Maintenance and extended warranty

Vital care to achieve outstanding reliability

With SMA Preventative Maintenance, plant owners benefit from a program that fits seamlessly with plant-level O&M plans. It is based on experienced field service engineers who apply the latest techniques and training to keep the inverters running at optimal levels, often in challenging environments

During annual service appointments, SMA experts perform a comprehensive 20-point inspection, which includes 17 functional tests. A careful fault history analysis is completed and maintenance is carried out to proactively eliminate a potential reduction in performance.

A detailed report documents the process and provides the operator with an annual device history.

Proactive preventative maintenance is a proven success factor in maximizing a PV plant’s availability, and no one is more capable to perform this essential task on SMA inverters than our field service experts. We aren’t just confident in our team’s ability to maximize your plant’s performance, we guarantee it.

Customized options for optimal risk sharing

Building PV power plants is about minimizing risk and maximizing profit. This usually requires guarantees from many parties along the project development value chain—but all guarantees are not equal. SMA offers a comprehensive, flexible extended warranty plan that provides the outstanding assurances needed to secure funding and execute operationally —and it comes from a solutions provider with unmatched experience, excellent financials and a core focus on the PV industry.

The SMA Extended Warranty protects against unforeseen costs from electrical or mechanical issues that may arise over the life of your PV plant. What’s more, SMA understands that every plant operator has a unique business model and is prepared to take on a varied level of service responsibility. That’s why we offer customizable service contracts where the customer chooses the depth of labor and materials obligations they are willing to take on as well as options for spare parts agreements. This results in the most cost-effective service strategy for every customer, no matter their size, experience or service capabilities.

A comprehensive suite of services to support your success

First-level support training from SMA’s central inverter experts

SMA Solar Academy

SMA understands our customers’ need to drive down operational costs wherever possible. Our first-level support training is designed to do exactly that, empowering your service personnel to perform maintenance on SMA central inverters. SMA Solar Academy trainers will conduct thorough curriculum over several days covering everything from electrical safety to extensive hands-on exercises.

First-level support training is available to select SMA customers who meet prerequisite conditions. Please contact your account representative to discuss how we can support your PV portfolio.

Our commitment to your profitability

Inverter Availability Guarantee

SMA’s field-proven service strategy has been crafted to maximize the ROI of your PV plant, and we stand behind that pledge. Our inverter availability guarantee provides the next-level of investment security and peace of mind for plant owners by committing to a predetermined metric for inverter availability.

Contact your sales representative to learn more about our inverter availability guarantees and how SMA can build an agreement that gives you maximum assurance in equipment reliability.

Breathe new life into distressed PV plants

Repowering Solutions

Owners and operators anticipate their PV power plants will perform as expected for the duration of the plant's lifetime. If they do not, financial returns suffer and can put the health of the investment at risk. Underperformance can be caused by a variety of factors including but not limited to:

Substandard installation practices
Insufficient O&M
Panel degradation
Low inverter efficiency in legacy products
Low availability of replacement components

Luckily, SMA's Repowering experts can identify and rectify the root causes of poor performance and get your PV plant back on the road to profitability.