Note
Scoping Maintenance When a Factory Has Both Solar and LED
A factory that installed a solar rooftop and retrofitted its production hall to LED lighting is now running two electrical systems that both need ongoing maintenance. If you did both installations, the client may ask whether they need two separate maintenance agreements or one. One agreement covering both systems is usually cleaner for the client and easier for your scheduling. The difficulty is writing a scope that is specific enough to follow without turning every visit into a negotiation about what is or is not included.
What Does Each System Actually Require?
Solar and LED maintenance are not the same kind of work, even though both fall under the electrical category.
Solar needs time-sensitive attention. The regular checks include: inverter health, module cleaning, DC isolator condition, string performance against the monitoring data, and any alerts from the generation dashboard. How often depends on the site. A rooftop in an industrial area with dusty roads may need module cleaning every two months to keep yield above what the client expects. An inverter health check twice a year is typically enough, but reviewing the monitoring dashboard can happen monthly if the client wants early fault alerts.
LED systems are lower maintenance but not zero. Drivers fail gradually, often with no obvious warning. In high-dust or high-heat environments, luminaires degrade faster. An annual lumen measurement to confirm output is still within spec, combined with a visual inspection and a targeted driver-replacement round on any units showing signs of failure, is usually what a production hall requires.
One practical difference: solar maintenance requires a technician comfortable with DC systems and inverter interfaces. LED maintenance sits closer to a general electrical inspection. On a small team, one technician often covers both, but confirm that skill set before the agreement goes out.
How Do You Fit Two Visit Schedules Into One Agreement?
The risk is four separate trip types: solar routine, solar emergency, LED routine, LED emergency. That is four booking categories and four billing triggers, which creates more scheduling complexity than most contractors manage well without a clear system.
A simpler approach: define visits by frequency, not by system.
- Monthly: monitoring check only, 1 to 2 hours on site. Solar dashboard review plus a walk-through of the LED areas to log anything visually wrong.
- Quarterly: half-day on site. Solar string check and DC isolator inspection, plus an LED driver condition round.
- Annual: full day on site. Module cleaning, inverter thorough check, lumen output measurement for LED, and a full checklist that produces a report for the client’s file.
Twelve monitoring checks, four quarterly visits, one annual audit: that is a predictable rhythm for the factory and a staffable schedule for your team. Write each visit type in the agreement with a checklist reference number so the scope is reviewable and not held in anyone’s head.
Should the Two Systems Share a Visit or Stay Separate?
For routine visits, combining them is more efficient and less disruptive. One quarterly half-day covering both systems is easier for the factory to schedule around production than two separate visits in the same month.
For fault response, keep the language separate in the contract. A solar fault carries more urgency because an inverter offline during peak production hours costs the client in lost generation every hour. An LED driver failure in a storage corridor is less pressing. Writing different response-time commitments for solar faults versus LED faults reflects this reality and avoids committing to an emergency response for every lighting issue.
Worked example: a contractor holds a combined maintenance agreement on a 250kW solar installation and a 380-fixture LED retrofit in the same factory. Both were installed at different points over the previous two years. Visit structure: 12 monthly monitoring checks (2 hours each), 4 quarterly service visits (half-day, both systems covered in the same visit), 1 annual audit (full day, detailed report on both systems). Fault response for solar: 4-hour on-site during business hours. Fault response for LED: next business day. The agreement provides a combined monthly dashboard report for solar generation data and an annual LED lumen output report to accompany the inspection record.
What Goes Into the Site Register for a Combined Site?
A site register that covers only one system is incomplete. At handover and at each annual audit, the register should carry installation dates, commissioning records, warranty expiry dates, and the next scheduled visit date for both systems.
Solar and LED carry separate warranty clocks: inverter, module, LED driver, and luminaire warranties often expire at different times and under different conditions. If the solar installation went in two years before the LED retrofit, both clocks are running simultaneously but on different cycles. A site register that shows each warranty as a separate line means a technician arriving for a fault can see at a glance whether the affected component is still under your installation warranty or falls to the manufacturer’s product warranty. That single piece of clarity prevents most of the arguments that come up after a component fails.
Also note the factory contact. On some sites, the person who approves solar work is from the engineering department, while LED maintenance goes through facilities management. Both contacts belong in the register.
FAQ
What if the solar and LED technicians need different certifications?
Most Thai electrical contractors doing both solar and LED use the same licensed electricians on both systems, with additional solar-specific training for DC work. If your team relies on a specialist for inverter work, make sure the fault response time in the agreement accounts for that technician’s actual availability rather than assuming a generic response time that applies to any electrical fault on the site.
Do the warranty clocks run together if the two systems were installed at different times?
No. Each system carries its own installation warranty and its own set of manufacturer warranties. The maintenance agreement should list the expiry date for each component separately: inverter, modules, LED drivers, LED luminaires. This matters most when a fault occurs. Knowing immediately whether the failed component is still under installation warranty or falls to the manufacturer’s product warranty removes the dispute about who covers the replacement.
How do you bill a fault visit when the technician finds the problem is in the other system?
Write the call-out clause to cover the site, not the system. A technician who arrives for a solar fault and discovers the real cause is a lighting circuit loading the same distribution board should be able to address it without needing a separate booking. Separating solar and LED calls entirely creates unnecessary friction for what is, after all, one site. One call-out rate and one response commitment covering the whole site is cleaner for both parties.
If you are putting together a combined maintenance agreement and want a second opinion on the structure before it goes to the client, schedule a call with us or see how the TRACE 30 site register and maintenance calendar handle multi-system sites at /program/.