A Playbook for Wildly Successful O&M Visits

We’ve all been there — reviewing yet another O&M invoice for a truck roll that didn’t resolve the issue and now requires a follow-up visit. Inefficiencies are all too common in today’s operating environment: inadequate site prep, time wasted on hold with manufacturers, unclear scopes of work, misdiagnosed issues, and more. Field technicians are increasingly stretched thin, creating a growing disconnect between field teams, administrative staff, and asset managers.

Setting Technicians Up for Success

Strong relationships with your O&M vendors are essential to operational health. Downtime — even just minutes — can cost thousands in lost energy and trigger performance guarantee liquidated damages. Your O&M partners should care as much about site performance as you do.

At ForeFront, we maintain a regular cadence of communication with O&M vendors through meetings, emails, and direct messaging. Many national O&M vendors offer customer portal access via their CRM systems, providing visibility into scheduling, work order notes, scopes of work, and full reports. When issues arise, we can use these touchpoints to define a clear scope of work, identify necessary parts or equipment, confirm scheduling availability (and enforce SLA response times if needed), and verify site access.

ForeFront also takes it a step further: our asset management team asks technicians to call in upon arrival to reconfirm the scope of work. These quick 30-second check-ins ensure alignment on the issue, confirm the right parts are on site, and provide any relevant context. This simple step has significantly improved remediation times and overall effectiveness.

Streamline Support Calls

A common bottleneck is that technicians get stuck on hold with DAS providers or OEM tech support. This is a prime opportunity to leverage the network and facilitate direct lines of communication. For example, large monitoring providers like AlsoEnergy offer scheduled “we’ll call you on site” support — an underutilized, free resource that can dramatically streamline site visits.

After technicians are done on site, we will request a check-out call. This quick, often 30-second phone call gives our team immediate feedback of the events or troubleshooting steps taken, and we can verify asset production live with the technician. There’s no worse feeling than a disconnect accidentally left in the off position after a technician leaves. Once the full work order report becomes available, it’s important to read it thoroughly and confirm site status visually through photos. Details, often missed by O&M account managers, are usually right there in the case notes, which are important to comprehend.

Invest in Monitoring

Our asset management team monitors over 300 solar sites daily. Each site is equipped with a robust data acquisition system (DAS), including pyranometers, weather sensors, smart meters, and battery backups. We carefully configure each site to ensure optimal performance tracking and alerting.

With access to granular data — down to string or MPPT zone level — we can pinpoint failures, distinguish between shading and equipment issues, and differentiate communication outages from true site outages. Combined with site drawings and electrical diagrams, this data allows us to narrow down troubleshooting areas and define precise scopes of work — often without ever stepping foot on site.

Save the Truck Roll

Solar equipment is getting smarter, and remote capabilities are expanding. We can now avoid truck rolls altogether by leveraging tools like:

• Auto-reclosing
• Remote tracker stow resets
• Inverter updates and resets
• Event log retrieval
• Modem pings for site status

Accessing these platforms can be tricky — often requiring specialized software, VPNs, port forwarding, and site-specific IPs. But with the right setup and training, these tools become powerful assets. Understanding your sites’ remote capabilities and investing in the know-how to use them can save significant time and money.

Remember: the cheapest truck roll is the one you didn’t need to send

When to Fix vs. Replace

Material costs can quickly escalate a truck roll. Sometimes, replacing a component is the fastest fix — but not always the smartest. It’s often worth spending a few extra minutes to determine whether a device is truly faulty or simply misconfigured.

Take current transformers (CTs), for example. These donut-shaped sensors can cause metering issues if phases are misaligned, but they rarely fail outright. Most problems stem from loose connections or improper landings.

Instead of defaulting to replacement, our scopes of work include detailed troubleshooting steps:

1. Visually inspect CTs and ensure they’re clamped tightly.
2. Check for CT extensions; if crimped, use gel-filled connectors and matching gauge wire.
3. Re-land CTs at the DAS terminal block, confirm metal-to-metal contact, and perform a pull test.  

These steps often resolve phase imbalances and restore accurate metering — without the need for new parts or follow-up visits. Maintaining a “rolodex” of troubleshooting procedures for common issues empowers field teams and minimizes unnecessary replacements.

By investing in strong vendor relationships, robust monitoring, remote capabilities, and thoughtful troubleshooting, asset managers can dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of O&M operations. The result? Fewer truck rolls, lower costs, and better-performing solar assets.