SunSpec Alliance

Its standards cover how PV plants operate on the smart grid, from residential and commercial systems up to utility-scale plants. It aims to get its specifications into use quickly and then pass them on to national and international standards bodies over time. SunSpec publishes interoperability specifications, including the Common Models and the Inverter Models. Equipment makers cite these documents in their Modbus documentation. SMA publishes technical information on how to turn on the SunSpec Modbus interface in its inverters and which SunSpec Modbus profiles they support. For operations and maintenance, SunSpec released a Best Practices in Solar Performance Monitoring document. Its Performance Committee is writing a guide to performance and safety measurements for commissioning commercial PV systems, covering tests such as IV curves, insulation resistance and thermography. The SunSpec Plant Extract specification describes a solar plant and its information attributes. Software such as the oSPARC reliability clearinghouse uses it. SunSpec worked under contract to NREL on PV and energy storage O&M best practices, and its staff are listed contributors to the Sandia and NREL O&M reports.

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• sentence 2: support check: partial - Passages only show document titles for the Common Models and Inverter Models specifications; they do not say equipment makers cite them in Modbus documentation.
• sentence 3: support check: partial - The titles show SMA technical information on activating the SunSpec Modbus interface and on SunSpec Modbus profiles, but not explicitly that these profiles are for its inverters.
• sentence 6: support check: partial - SunSpec is under contract to NREL for O&M best practices, and SunSpec staff appear in the contributor lists, but the passages don't mention energy storage and don't clearly tie the contributors to the Sandia and NREL O&M reports. -->