Melbourne-headquartered Proa Energy has secured $4.1 million (USD 2.9 million) in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for its HiveOps platform, which is a unified orchestration platform designed to connect early detection of underperformance with financially optimised maintenance decisions and dynamic operational response.
The $10.5 million project will connect asset performance data with financial and operational decision-making, helping solar farm operators to recognise underperformance faster, recover lost generation and revenue, prioritise maintenance based on financial impact, and reduce operating costs and improve whole-of-life asset performance.
Under typical operating conditions, HiveOps is expected to reduce levelised cost of energy by 3-4%, with potential reductions of 10–15% in extreme cases.
Proa Founder and Chief Executive Officer Victor Depoorter said HiveOps would connect system level data, financial decision-making and operational response often managed through separate systems and processes.
“HiveOps is designed to give operators greater visibility across their assets so they can identify issues earlier, understand their financial impact, prioritise action and take effective operational steps to recover lost production,” Depoorter said.
“The objective is straightforward: recover generation that would otherwise be lost, reduce operating costs and improve the performance of renewable energy assets over their lifetime.”
Depoorter said solar farms are increasingly sophisticated assets, but operators still face the challenge of identifying underperformance quickly, understanding its financial impact and deciding where and when to act.
The project is scheduled to end in 2028, and will be delivered by Proa in partnership with Sydney-based renewable energy developer and operator Potentia Energy and France-headquartered engineering, procurement, construction, operations and maintenance specialist Equans Solar & Storage.
ARENA’s acting Chief Executive Officer Chris Faris said achieving ultra low-cost solar requires innovation across the entire value chain.
“Proa Energy’s work to help fine-tune the performance of solar farms and help reduce running costs and bring about a faster, more affordable energy transition for all Australians,” Faris said.
During the project both Potentia Energy and Equans Solar & Storage will be deploying trial units at their operational sites.
Global analysis of more than 190 GW of operating solar capacity found the average site lost 5.8% of its potential generation to faults and underperformance in 2024, up from less than 2% five years earlier.
Applied to Australia’s large-scale solar fleet, which generates approximately 20,000 GWh a year, a performance gap at that scale equates to more than 1,100 GWh of lost generation annually.
Recovering even a third would return around 400 GWh to the grid each year or roughly the annual electricity consumption of 70,000 Australian homes.
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