Solar asset management software for PV plants, rooftops and microgrids

Solar asset management software that keeps every inverter, combiner box, string, battery bank and generator on its own record, runs cleaning, inspection and thermography cycles across every site, and holds the maintenance evidence a warranty claim or asset owner needs.

Book a demo

Updated 15 Oct 2026

FieldEx scheduling board on desktop with a technician's inspection checklist open on the mobile app, as used by solar O&M teams

FieldEx is field service management and maintenance management (CMMS) in one system for solar and microgrid operations and maintenance (O&M) providers. It keeps each site's inverters, combiner boxes, strings, trackers, batteries and generators on record, runs preventive maintenance, cleaning and inspections on schedule, turns inverter trips and faults into tracked jobs, and keeps the readings, photos and reports from every visit.

What FieldEx does for solar and microgrid O&M teams

Solar O&M is a long, quiet contract punctuated by faults: years of scheduled cleaning, inspections and torque checks across dozens or hundreds of sites, and then an inverter trip that costs generation every hour it stays down. FieldEx keeps both kinds of work on the same site and asset records, so the technician who answers a fault sees every earlier visit to that inverter, and the owner sees the evidence that each scheduled task was done. Compare approaches in our guide to CMMS software, or book a demo.

Plants, rooftops and microgrid sites on record

A site record for every ground-mount plant, commercial rooftop and microgrid, with its address, map pin, owner contacts, service zone and the projects it belongs to.
An asset record for each inverter, combiner box, string, tracker row, transformer, battery bank and generator, with serial numbers, specifications, photos, warranty details and attached datasheets.
Parent and component levels, so an inverter station keeps its inverters, and each inverter its own fault and repair history, in asset management.
Single-line diagrams, layout drawings and handover documents attached to the site, and a change history on each asset of who edited what and when.

Preventive maintenance and cleaning cycles

Site plans for whole-plant work such as panel washing and vegetation cutting, and asset plans for individual inverters, trackers and generators, each creating its jobs automatically.
Intervals by day, week, month or year, including quarterly and every 3 years, on a fixed calendar or counted from the last completed visit. Fixed calendar dates apply to time-based plans.
Generator and hybrid plant service triggered on running hours, on the calendar, or on whichever comes first.
One plan applied across a whole portfolio, picking up new assets that match its criteria, in preventive maintenance planning.

Inspections, thermography and test records

Recurring inspections per asset type, on the schedule each one needs, linked to their own checklists, such as the annual combiner box thermography and torque check.
Due, overdue and completed status, with reminders by email, in-app notification or both.
The date, the technician, the result and remarks on each record, with thermal images, test sheets and reports attached, through compliance documentation.
A dashboard of overdue inspections, those due in the next 7 days and those completed in the last 7 days.

Faults, inverter trips and response times

Faults logged by the control room, by the asset owner through a branded portal, or from a failed checklist answer, each becoming a job ready to assign, in work order management.
Service-level agreements with stages such as respond, make safe and restore, each with at-risk and violation alerts against business hours.
Different response targets per owner, per contract or per site asset, within the dates each contract is valid.
A notification when a new fault repeats a recent job on the same inverter, so recurring trips get a root-cause visit.

Technicians on roofs and in the field

Automatic assignment by skill, availability, shift, leave, service zone and live location, with a drag-and-drop scheduler for exceptions, in scheduling and dispatch.
Each job on the FieldEx mobile app with the asset's history, the right checklist, number fields for voltages, currents and torque values, and watermarked photos.
Ordered tasks with safety steps that must be finished before the next task can start.
Jobs downloaded before the drive, worked without a signal at remote plants and uploaded when the connection returns.

Spares and warranty parts

Inverter boards, fuses, connectors, tracker motors and replacement panels held in each warehouse and each technician's own stock, with transfers and barcode scanning.
Reorder and low-stock alerts per stock location, in spare parts inventory.
Warranty periods and manufacturer details on each part, and every part used recorded on the job and the asset.

Records for owners and asset managers

Completion PDFs with the equipment, fault and resolution, parts used, check-in and check-out times, timestamped attachments and the customer's signature, emailed with a record of when each was sent.
A customer portal where the owner sees its equipment, upcoming asset maintenance, job status and downloadable reports.
Reports on asset reliability, maintenance cost and age, and on jobs, inspections and sites, exported or emailed on a schedule, in reporting and analytics.

How often should a solar PV system be serviced?

It depends on the system and what it serves. Solar Energy UK's guidelines for the operation and maintenance of rooftop solar PV (Industry best practice manual 3.0) set different frequencies by category: a competent person visually inspects the inverter's internal components for discolouration, corrosion, wear and damage every 5 to 10 years on a domestic system, but every year on school, hospital and commercial systems. Inverter production should be checked weekly, or daily where remote monitoring is available. The International Electrotechnical Commission's IEC 62446-2:2020 sets out the preventive, corrective and performance-related maintenance requirements for grid-connected PV systems.

For an O&M provider, the result is a portfolio where the same task runs on different cycles depending on whose roof it is on.

What FieldEx does about it

Frequencies by site type: domestic, commercial and public-sector sites each carry their own plan, so the inverter inspection runs annually on one and every 5 years on another.
Weekly production checks as jobs: a short weekly check can run as a recurring job with its own checklist where remote monitoring isn't in place.
Preventive and corrective on the same record: scheduled visits and fault repairs both sit on the inverter's asset history.
Next visit always visible: each plan shows the last and next maintenance date for every site and inverter it covers.

What tasks belong on a solar plant maintenance checklist?

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Best Practices for Operation and Maintenance of Photovoltaic and Energy Storage Systems (3rd edition) gives a model scope of work. Once a year it includes infrared scans of all combiner and re-combiner boxes, tightening connections to the manufacturer's torque specification and reporting broken terminal blocks, plus string-level open-circuit voltage and DC operating current tests and I-V curve traces on a share of strings. For rooftops, Solar Energy UK adds roof checks from ground level for visible damage, gutter condition, and moss or birds' nests: annually on domestic systems and six-monthly on schools and hospitals.

That is why most owners hand the work to an O&M contractor, and why the contractor's records become the owner's proof.

What FieldEx does about it

One checklist per task family: combiner box scans, string tests, roof checks and inverter inspections each have their own checklist, grouped into sections.
Measurements, not ticks: number fields record each string's open-circuit voltage and operating current, and the I-V curve file is attached to the job.
Broken parts become work: a failed answer, such as a broken terminal block, raises the corrective job with its tasks and can book a follow-up inspection.
Your own scope, digitized: checklist questions can be generated with AI from a description or a PDF or PNG of your existing checklist or procedure, then edited.

Do solar panels really need cleaning, and how often?

There is no single interval. Solar Energy UK says the frequency depends on many factors, including the manufacturer's requirements and local soiling. NREL's model scope of work washes all panels with water, with no chemicals, once a year or as a soiling study recommends. IEC 62446-2 treats panel cleaning and vegetation upkeep as performance maintenance, work done to get the most from the plant rather than to keep it safe.

So the cleaning cycle is set per site, and adjusted when the dust, the birds or the season change.

What FieldEx does about it

A cleaning plan per site: each plant or rooftop carries its own washing schedule, on a fixed calendar or counted from the last clean.
Change the cycle, not the records: when a soiling study moves a site from yearly to twice-yearly cleaning, the plan changes and the history stays.
Before and after photos: watermarked photos on the job show the panels before and after cleaning.
Vegetation on its own schedule: grass cutting and vegetation control run as a separate site plan with their own crew.

What are the most common problems with solar inverters?

NREL's O&M guide says a sound O&M plan should account for inverter failure, because it is one of the most frequent causes of PV system performance loss. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in fleet benchmarking presented at Sandia's PV Performance Modeling workshop, put inverter downtime losses at 1.8% in the best case, 3.3% in the middle and 4.8% in the worst. A common fault behind inverter trips, according to Solar Energy UK, is a failed DC cable between the array and the inverter, known as a Riso fault, an insulation resistance fault, an isolation fault or "error code 447".

What FieldEx does about it

Inverter history in one place: every trip, repair, firmware note and replaced board stays on that inverter's asset record.
Repeat trips flagged: a notification flags when a new fault repeats a recent job on the same inverter.
Insulation tests recorded: number fields capture insulation resistance readings when the technician traces a Riso fault, recorded against the string and the inverter.
Reliability you can rank: asset reliability reports show which inverters and sites take the most corrective work.

How quickly should a solar O&M provider respond to a fault?

NREL's O&M guide says the response time should be written into the contract, and typically will be 10 days or less for corrective maintenance that isn't safety-related. Its example performance guarantee assumes 98% availability in the first year and 99% in the second and later years. EPRI's preliminary fleet data found that sites with stuck trackers had median availability of about 90% to 95%, against the 98% to 99% such guarantees assume, which shows how much a slow response costs.

What FieldEx does about it

Contract response times as SLAs: each owner's contract terms become a service-level agreement with stages for response and repair, with safety faults on a tighter target.
Alerts before the clock runs out: at-risk and violation alerts go to the users or groups you choose, the job owner or their manager.
Response performance on record: SLA timing, completion and violations show on each job and in reports, ready for the owner's monthly review.
The nearest qualified technician: jobs are matched by skill, availability and live location, so the response clock isn't lost to driving.

How much do solar panels degrade each year?

NREL's analytical review of PV degradation rates by Jordan and Kurtz found a median of 0.5% a year and a mean of 0.8% a year, with 78% of reported rates below 1% a year. NREL's O&M guide gives representative rates of 0.36% a year for monocrystalline silicon, 0.64% for multicrystalline silicon and 0.40% for cadmium telluride. EPRI's fleet data show a mean and median performance loss rate of 0.7% a year across panel and system degradation.

Faster loss than that is a reason to look for a fault or to start a warranty claim.

What FieldEx does about it

Panel batches on record: each string or array records the panel type, manufacturer, install date and warranty details.
Test results kept over time: string readings entered on every annual test stay on the asset, so the trend is visible year after year.
Evidence for the manufacturer: I-V curves, thermal images and photos are attached to the asset and the job, ready for a claim. Through the FieldEx API, monitoring systems can send data and create jobs in FieldEx.

What causes solar panels to fail in the field?

NREL's degradation review cites a survey of more than 4,000 panels in which over 90% of field failures were caused by corrosion and interconnect breakage. Solar Energy UK lists other causes seen on rooftops: incorrect installation of string boxes, DC isolators and cables, bird droppings, vandalism, extreme weather, and transport and installation damage.

Most of these show up on an inspection long before they show up in the yield.

What FieldEx does about it

Inspection questions for each cause: the checklist asks about corrosion, cracked panels, damaged cables, soiling and bird activity, with a reference photo for each.
Failures logged against the asset: each failed panel or connector is recorded on the string's history, with photos and the part replaced.
Storm checks when needed: after extreme weather, the office creates inspection jobs for the affected sites ahead of their scheduled dates.

How often should infrared thermography be done on PV electrical equipment?

NFPA 70B (2023 edition), the US standard for electrical equipment maintenance, makes inspection of all qualifying electrical equipment mandatory at least every 12 months, as summarized by TÜV SÜD America. Equipment rated in Physical Condition 3 needs thermographic inspection at least every 6 months. NREL's model O&M scope includes infrared scans of all combiner and re-combiner boxes once a year.

What FieldEx does about it

Thermography as a recurring inspection: combiner boxes, inverters and transformers carry an annual or six-monthly thermography inspection, linked to its checklist.
Condition sets the cycle: equipment moved to a poorer condition can change asset status and move to a more frequent inspection plan.
Images on the record: thermal images are attached to the inspection and the asset, with the result and remarks.
Hot spots raise work: a failed answer on the checklist raises the corrective job straight away.

What maintenance records should a solar O&M provider keep?

NREL's O&M guide asks providers to maintain preventive maintenance and inspection records as proof that the maintenance needed to keep warranties in effect has been done, alongside corrective maintenance logs. Solar Energy UK says all relevant documentation and manuals should be provided and kept for the life of the system. EPRI's fleet failure analysis used maintenance records from computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) as one of its inputs, which is the same data an owner later relies on.

In a humid climate, water in a connector or a nicked cable is often enough to trip the inverter after a morning shower.

What FieldEx does about it

Every visit on the asset: jobs, inspections, readings, photos and parts used stay on each inverter, string and battery bank, with a change history.
Documents for the life of the plant: manuals, datasheets, warranty certificates and handover packs are attached to the site and its assets.
Proof for warranty claims: completion PDFs and inspection records show what was done, when and by whom.
Exports on request: maintenance and inspection data can be reported by site, asset type or period and exported as CSV, Excel or PDF.

How often should torque be checked on PV mounting and electrical connections?

Solar Energy UK recommends checking the torque setting of a sample of clamp fixings, as per the manufacturer's design, every 5 to 10 years on domestic systems and annually on larger categories. NREL's model scope tightens combiner box connections to the manufacturer's torque specification once a year.

That gap is where maintenance matters: soiling, failed strings and tired inverters, not the panels themselves.

What FieldEx does about it

Torque values entered as numbers: number fields on the job record the torque applied at each sample point or combiner box.
Annual and multi-year cycles together: the yearly combiner box torque check and the five-to-ten-year clamp check run as separate points on the same plan.
The specification on hand: the manufacturer's torque table is attached to the asset and visible to the technician on the phone.

What safety checks apply to technicians working on rooftop solar?

The UK Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) brief guide to working at height (INDG401) says to avoid work at height where it is reasonably practicable, and otherwise to prevent falls. Solar Energy UK says a horizontal lifeline fall protection system should be pull-tested every 4 years and inspected annually. IEC 62446-2 includes worker safety among its maintenance procedures.

What FieldEx does about it

Safety tasks first: a rooftop job opens with the access and isolation checks as ordered tasks, and the work task can't start until they are complete.
Lifelines as assets: each roof's lifeline carries an annual inspection and a four-yearly pull test as recurring records, with the report attached.
Roof work to qualified technicians: work at height requires its matching skill, so it is assigned only to technicians who hold it.

How should battery banks in a solar microgrid be maintained and replaced?

NREL's O&M guide says battery maintenance costs increase as a battery plant ages, so owners need a strategy for when and how to replace batteries in phases, with a reserve set aside for it. Voltage differences between batteries over time show when maintenance is needed, and NREL stresses that good record keeping is needed to track those trends.

What FieldEx does about it

Each bank with its age and warranty: battery banks sit under the microgrid's power system with their install date, warranty and replacement history.
Voltages recorded every visit: number fields capture each battery's voltage, building the trend NREL asks for.
Replacement planned from data: maintenance cost and age reports per asset help plan phased replacement. Battery readings, including state of health, can be captured on digital forms at each visit.
Generators on the same plan: hybrid generators run on running-hour and calendar triggers alongside the batteries.

Customer story

AMRTUR, a Southeast Asian oilfield services contractor, runs maintenance for its offshore and onshore equipment on FieldEx. Its story describes maintenance triggered at 300 hours of use or 6 months, whichever comes first, component-level tracking over a five-year service plan, and QR-code requests routed to the right team, the same pattern a remote generation fleet needs.

Read the AMRTUR story

Agri Sumber Prestari (ASP), an agricultural manpower and training company under SD Guthrie Agri Bio, runs maintenance across 92 agricultural estates in Malaysia on FieldEx. Its story describes preventive maintenance scheduling, automated jobs and inspections, live inventory with low-stock alerts, and regional planning cut from a full day to half a day, the same spread-out, rural work a solar portfolio brings.

Read the Agri Sumber Prestari story

Questions solar O&M providers ask about FieldEx

What is the best solar asset management software for O&M contractors?

For O&M work, solar asset management software has to hold each site's inverters, strings and batteries, run cleaning, inspection and thermography cycles, dispatch faults against contract response times and keep the evidence for owners and warranty claims. FieldEx does this in one system, with field service and maintenance management on the same asset records.

Can FieldEx run different maintenance cycles for rooftop and utility-scale sites?

Yes. Each site type carries its own plans and intervals, and one plan can cover many sites while picking up new assets that match its criteria.

Can technicians record string voltages, currents and torque values?

Yes. Number fields on the job capture each reading against the string, combiner box or inverter, and test files such as I-V curves are attached to the job.

Can FieldEx create jobs from our monitoring platform's alarms?

Jobs can be created automatically from other systems as well as from checklists, the customer portal and QR-code requests. FieldEx can connect to any open system through REST APIs and has connectors for QuickBooks and Xero. A monitoring or SCADA platform can create jobs through the FieldEx API.

Can we track response times written into each O&M contract?

Yes. Service-level agreements can be set per customer within the contract's validity dates, with several stages, business hours and alerts before each target is missed.

Can asset owners see the maintenance we have done?

Yes. The branded customer portal shows their equipment with last-serviced dates, upcoming asset maintenance, job status and downloadable job reports.

Can FieldEx track spare inverters and parts across sites?

Yes. Each warehouse and each technician's own stock is tracked, with transfers, reorder alerts per location, warranty periods on parts and a history of every part used.

Can crews work at remote plants without a signal?

Yes. Jobs and tasks can be downloaded and worked offline, with check-in, check-out and travel synced later.

Can FieldEx keep warranty evidence for each inverter and panel batch?

Yes. Warranty details sit on each asset and part, and every inspection, reading, photo and repair is kept on the asset's history with the completion PDF.

How quickly can FieldEx be running across our solar portfolio?

Once we know your requirements and your data is ready, FieldEx can be implemented in as little as a week with standard features for small businesses. Larger setups and custom work take longer. Setup, data upload and training are included in the subscription, with no setup fee. Sites and assets can be uploaded. FieldEx helps with setup, and training is included. See FieldEx implementation.

See your solar sites' cleaning, inspections and faults on one record

Book a demo