PV Solar Technician

Major equipment  

• Warranties – ensure the inverters, transformers and other major equipment are operated and maintained in accordance with OEM requirements to prevent any risk to warranties.
• Operations and maintenance – oversight of major equipment operations with a focus to fully understand the day to day operations and maintenance activities of the major equipment.
• Failure reporting - Interrogate and review all flash and failure reports related to major equipment faults for sufficiency and accuracy.
• Event logs – ensure the logging of all relevant O&M data to ensure a full understanding of warnings and faults is developed to fully understand the failure causes and remedies
• Fault trending – review relevant fault and O&M data to enable a good understanding of fault trends and assist the Performance Engineer with mitigation of resulting down time.

Preventative / Scheduled maintenance 

Oversee the Operator’s Scheduled Maintenance (SM) activities which includes but not limited to the following:

• Review all SM Planning for adequacy and compliance to warranty requirements - annual, monthly, weekly, daily.
• Optimization of SM – ensure opportunities to schedule concurrent activities to reduce downtime are identified timeously.
• RAMS – ensure risk assessments and method statements are in place before any work is conducted as per SA OHS requirements.  
• Reporting – oversee and manage all Operators OM related reporting in support of the site Supervisor.

Key preventative maintenance activities include but are not limited to:

• Substation maintenance – main transformer, primary HV  switchgear and MV switch gear.
• Central Inverters and inverter transformers – scheduled maintenance as per the OEM maintenance schedules.
• DC combiner boxes - as per maintenance schedules including IV testing
• PV Modules -  infra red drone scans .
• Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) – oversee Operators use of their CMMS to ensure a comprehensive record of all preventive maintenance activities.

Corrective maintenance

Oversee the Operator’s Corrective Maintenance (CM) activities which includes but not limited to the following:

• Reducing the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) - ensuring minimum time to detect faults – together with the Head Office (HO) monitoring team.
• Ensure adequate CM activity planning is undertaken by the Operator – timeous checking on availability of spares, special tools and skills / personnel.
• Authorization - ensuring all works are only carried out by authorized persons.
• Ensuring CM works are carried out safely – ensuring Lock out and Tag out (LOTO), review of RAMS and last minute risk assessments.
• Records - ensure adequate records of the CM works are taken in the form of pictures and ensure HO management is kept updated on progress.
• Ensure that the spares utilization is recorded and inventories updated.

Spares

• Ensure spares utilization is recorded and the spares inventory is correct and up to date – at least monthly.
• Critical spares – assist the Head Office (HO) Performance Engineer with fault data and trending to mitigate the mean time between failures (MTBF) caused by lack of critical spares.

Operational and maintenance reporting

• Provide details in respect of faults and assist Head Office monitoring in ensuring the fault log is always up to date.
• Attend O&M meetings to ensure proper understanding of equipment Faults and fault trending
• Provide additional insight, relevant information requested by Head Office  Maintenance Manager and or Performance Engineer for root cause analysis (RCA) or performance reporting purposes
• Review Operator’s failure flash reports to ensure it is in the agreed format, accurate and comprehensive.

Ad hoc support

• Provides ad hoc relevant support to Head Office (HO) Maintenance Engineer and HO Engineering and Performance Director when and where required

5. QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS:

Essential Qualifications:

• Minimum of a National Diploma in Electrical/ Mechanical Engineering or NQF equivalent (essential)

Experience, Knowledge and Skills:

• A minimum of 2 - 5 years' experience in utility scale renewable energy power plant or relevant industry experience is desired.
• Working knowledge of solar PV plants is an advantage
• Experience in switching MV and HV systems and Log Out Tag Out (LOTO) procedure.
• Demonstrate experience and interest in fault finding and on-site electrical repairs.
• Able to read and understand schematics and single line diagrams (SLD’s).
• SCADA – able to retrieve and analyse data to enable trend analysis.
• Valid driver’s licence.

Language:

• English Language
• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal.

Business Understanding:

• Experienced working in complex multinational organisations.
• Financial systems technical expertise.
• Understanding of the energy sector.

Technical and Behavioural Competencies

• Legislation, Policies, Procedures and Standards
• MV switching ORHVS
• Proficient in data capture and SCADA systems
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Excel, Word and PowerPoint)
• Basic understanding of wind and solar PV project operation and maintenance
• Analytical Thinking – to enable troubleshooting
• Ability to prioritize
• Team player – to enable cooperation from OM Operator
• Manage high stress situations
• Well organized

Location / travel

• Flexibility to travel throughout South Africa.