Mutual respect and knowledge of domain brings about the implementation of revolutionary processes and yield fruitful results. With the renewable sector being on the rise in India, entrepreneurial initiatives are getting reflected all across it. Despite a lot of ground and roof mounted installations of MWs scale, there were no single one stop solution that offered quality control services to these PV plant owners. Prakash Suratkar, Ayush Mahajan, Atul Jain and Pranav Maheshwari recognized this gap at an early stage while working at an EPC. They took a plunge into this relatively unknown business segment forming PV Diagnostics(PV-D) in January 2017. Barkha Bansal who was a classmate of Ayushand Pranav also contributed to the initial company formation and strategy discussions and later joined as a co-founder. She quit her job at an international venture capital firm. Prakash’s years of experience in the semiconductor space, and the presence of a talented group of

young engineers from IIT Bombay, is the core of the success of PV-D so far.

The Way to Work
PV-D works with large scale companies in the solar sector, implements quality control measures throughout the value chain,plant's diagnostics, and performance improvement. In other words, if someone has a plant which is 3-5 years old and that individual is led to believe that the plant is going through some problems, PV-D performs a thorough health check up of the plant to identify, and solves them effectively.

“First we ask companies to do a diagnostic study which would typically be of 5-10 days in which we study modules, inverters etc. on a sample basis. Then we work with our clients to develop a detailed performance improvement plan, taking into account, their budget and returns expectations,” says Ayush Mahajan.

PV-D also provides quality assessment of the work done by EPC contractors and third party factory audits for module manufacturers. “We managed to take a lab grade test ‘Electro luminescence Imaging’ to the field using an inhouse portable EL camera which helps us in identifying any cracks in the modules on the field. If the modules have cracked, we can fairly say that at some point, the system quality is getting compromised. We have tested

more than 20,000 modules across the country and we found that 20-30% of them have cracks”, states Pranav Maheshwari, Co-Founder.

The Growth Story
Since its inception in 2017, PV-D has worked with some of the prominent clients & industry leaders. Their clients include names like Tata Power Renewable Energy and Softbank Energy among several others, the number of which counts up to 25+ clients. “We've worked with developers from Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. We've done projects in every state with a solar power plant including multiple locations in Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telengana, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal and also have a strong pipeline of projects for the next coming quarters,” states Barkha Bansal, Co-Founder.

“With our services, we are able to create job opportunities in rural india and also are able to train young minds for PV sector. I will say this is personaly very satsifying to me” Says Atul Jain, Co-founder.

Expressing the future of the company, Prakash Suratkar, Co-Founder, concludes, “We have strong technology roadmap, working out alliances with reputed institution within India and aboard to offer technologically advanced services and products such as smart diagonstics sofware. We are also building an R&D infrastructure of our own.”