Proa lands $2.9M ARENA grant to close solar farm performance gap
What's the deal? Melbourne-based Proa EnergyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has won a A$4.1 million ($2.9 million) grant from the Australian Renewable Energy AgencyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → for its HiveOps platform, which helps solar farm operators detect faults and cut operating costs. The grant anchors a A$10.5 million project running through 2028.
What's the endgame? HiveOps links asset performance data with financial and operational decisions, letting operators spot underperformance faster, prioritise maintenance by financial impact, and recover lost generation.
Under typical conditions, ProaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → expects the platform to cut levelised cost of energy by 3-4%, rising to 10-15% in extreme cases. The project will be delivered with Sydney developer Potentia EnergyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and France-based Equans Solar & StorageDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, both of which will deploy trial units at operational sites.
Why now? The performance gap is widening. Global analysis of more than 190GW of operating solar found the average site lost 5.8% of potential generation to faults in 2024, up from under 2% five years earlier.
Applied to Australia's large-scale fleet, which generates roughly 20,000GWh a year, that gap equals more than 1,100GWh of lost generation annually. Recovering even a third would return around 400GWh to the grid — about the yearly electricity use of 70,000 Australian homes.
What they said: "HiveOps is designed to give operators greater visibility across their assets so they can identify issues earlier, understand their financial impact, prioritise action and take effective operational steps to recover lost production," said founder and chief executive officer Victor Depoorter.
ARENA's acting chief executive officer Chris Faris said achieving ultra low-cost solar "requires innovation across the entire value chain."
The signal: The grant sits in the top 3% by size among artificial intelligence grant rounds in Australia over the past four years. As operators grapple with a growing performance gap, capital is flowing to software that turns raw generation data into maintenance and revenue decisions.
Read more: pv-magazine-australia.com
Image credit: Proa
