NTT unit to repair big solar plants

NTT Facilities Inc, a unit of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp , plans to start service offering to monitor and maintain mega solar plants.

The service, scheduled for next spring, will prevent the deterioration in performance that can reduce power output of a solar plant by about 15 percent over about a 17-year life, the paper said.

NTT is targeting trading companies, financial institutions and other enterprises building mega solar plants to cash in on the introduction of the feed-in-tariff mechanism for renewable energy resources that takes effect next July in Japan, the Nikkei said.

Initially, NTT Facilities, which designs and installs solar plants for industrial purposes, will offer its new monitoring and maintenance service to the same customers that use its installation service, the daily said.

The company intends to use special equipment built into power conditioners to monitor operations at solar plant from a server on the internet to identify times when declines in electricity output take place due to malfunctions and immediately dispatch maintenance staff to make repairs, the paper said.

NTT Facilities, which hopes to sign up about ten customers in fiscal 2012, will charge 400,000-500,000 yen or $5,206-$6,508 annually for monitoring service and a separate 500,000 yen to 1 million yen for each repair visit, according to Reuters citing a Nikkei report.