Achieving success one hour at a time
solar pv project development advisory services
After interacting with hundreds of developers, owners and EPC firms over the course of our career, we have found quite consistently that their money is better spent if they have invested in project development design services.
Who We Are
Miguel Silva is a dynamic, solution-focused technical leader with more than 24 years of international experience in solar PV, project management, installation and engineering across LATAM, Spain, Canada and USA.
Miguel has a proven track record delivering and directing key technical aspects in support of business development and project development.
Miguel excels at guiding development engineering and system optimization.
What is more, Miguel is skilled in supporting M&A by providing astute technical due diligence and risk analysis. He combines technical insight and business acumen to identify opportunities, and successfully compile proposals and deliver technical presentations.
Skilled in applying comprehensive understanding of project lifecycle from conception through to commissioning to consistently deliver projects. Demonstrated skills in identifying, developing and delivering competitive solutions that enhance companies’ success.
For more information please visit Miguel's LinkedIn page.
“Miguel has a very strong technical understanding of solar power plant development and execution, based on a long track record in the industry...”
“... Beyond his technical capabilities and industry knowledge, Miguel is a hard working, self-motivated person who can be counted on to put the project and team needs first. I would be glad to work with him again in the future. ”
28+ years experience in Solar PV
Five years leading technical due diligence activities while supporting Business and Project Development, and M&A initiatives across LATAM.
Led technical due diligence for First Solar, Inc., 140MWac PV in Chile.
Successfully conveyed technological advantages when comparing different PV system technologies.
International experience in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Panama, Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Spain and Germany.
Services
We will help you to conceptualize, optimize, develop and manage some aspects of your project to ensure its technical and economic viability.
In support of preliminary assesment, we will advise you on key technical decisions: from PV module technology and BoS components selection, to critical design parameters (i.e. AC/DC ratio, DC voltages, etc); optimizing for Net Present Value or Lowest Cost of Energy and highest Return on Investments
Using the right simulation parameters and the latest mathematical models we will provide you with the most accurate simulations results. We know how PV modules respond to weather and to solar resource. We are experts in understanding and accurately predicting the impact that components, system configurations and meteorological data quality will have on your project’s ROI.
Combining 19 years EPC experience with advanced software tools, we will help you to generate preliminary optimized site plans making your project more competitive.
We will perform early stage integrated cost and schedule risk analysis to help you set good baselines not only with respect to cost and schedule but also regarding best practices; this will enable you to start with the right foot in the right direction.
Whether you will develop a project from start or acquire one already developed or built, we will perform a comprehensive technical due diligence review to ensure that you get the best value for the money you invest. We will also advise you of pitfalls and unwise acquisitions should we find them. MORE
We will help you to evaluate the competitive landscape using advanced geospatial analysis to find the best location for your project. Using your mouse move the spy glass to hover over the map below and discover winning Brazilian projects from the last three auctions, sub stations in Chile, generation facilities in Argentina, transmission system in Bolivia or substations in Ecuador. We just added all DISCO companies by their consecion territory.
Note: It takes 1 to 2 minutes to upload the interactive maps, depending on your internet speed ...thanks for your patience
We understand very well how silicon crystalline and thin film PV module technologies respond to air mass, temperature and spectral shift; hence we will help you to model accurately both technologies. We will provide to you less uncertain inputs to your financial model.
Below, on the State of Ceara's map in Brazil; use the spy glass to observe an example of how both, cSi and thin film PV modules will "see" the available GHI (normalized).
The map in blue represents normalized GHI for cSi modules and in red for thin film (we used CdTe PV modules in this example); click on any point on the map, move the spyglass and see how the GHI in the legend changes.
Contact us to learn more about how we will be able to help you with project development, M&A or project execution. BACK
We are ready to help you to succeed, from Project Development or M&A to each step of the way through the project's entire life cycle.
Either on the front end or at the implementation and execution phases; we worked with top global leaders in many projects, from residential and commercial up to utility scale systems; using fixed-tilt and/or tracking mounting structures. Click the pictures to the left to find some examples.
Proper planning, risk assessment and modeling will help you to be prepared with a plan and the tools necessary to quickly adapt to unexpected changes. Our experience over almost a quarter of a century will help you to be better prepared. Click photos to the right for examples of adverse situations and/or challenges we faced in the past.
2008 Sarnia, Ontario Canada
2005, Cupertino, CA
2005 Cupertino, CA
2013 California, USA
2008 Ontario, Canada
2006 Andalucia, Spain
2004 Napa, California
2005 Napa, California
2005 Napa, California
2004 Freemont, California
2004 Clovis, California
2005 Wiley Manuel Court House, Oakland, CA
2005 Jumilla, Murcia Spain
2004 California, USA
2012 Arizona, USA
2004 Germany
California, USA
2004 Napa, California, USA
2004 Napa, California
Napa, California
California, USA
Approach to dispose excavated material
2004 Napa, California
2005 Germany
Contractors' creativity to support in place piers
This might be your first solar PV power plant; that does not means that you need to repeat what we did when we first started long time ago. Let's us collaborate with you to define the right front end studies and the best execution strategy. Click to the left to see some construction examples for tracker and fixed tilt systems.
Bulldozer, the grading automation tool developed by Geo Future helps our Clients determine which trackers offer the best cost to benefit ratio; beyond just helping to find the optimum surfaces (preliminary grading), but; also providing data to identify the existing trade-off between earth work vs. steel costs; which depending on the market, may be very different from one place to another.
© Copyright 2018, GeoFuture, LLC.
We are proud to share with you a sneak peek of a white paper that was recently released by EPRI; for which we were invited to collaborate by Dr. Doug Hall with Hall Consulting. Our work we believe is a step in the right direction, this is a very complex matter with many parameters and and far reaching impacts, direct and indirect, to the LCOE.
“As
a result, currently, each potential rough-terrain site must be treated
uniquely with detailed engineering analysis performed to determine
the amount of land preparation required along with any specialty
components (such as longer piles) required in specific locations
within the plant.”
We invite you to connect with EPRI so you could have access to the complete study.
EPRI / Electric Power Research Institute
Bulldozer use pile lengths as a variable, together with tracker’s grading specifications. Once the tracker layout - any tracker in the market - and the file with the topography are uploaded, Bulldozer runs thousands of permutations, in 10 seconds or less. The output is a table with the optimum cut and fill quantities for any project size, organizing results by tracker row, by sub array, by array or by any configuration the Client may had specified.
Once the Client identify the best configuration, the function that produces a contour map as an output is manually enabled by the user and start running. This process could take 5 minutes or more, its output is a geo-referenced 3D AutoCAD file with the contours for the proposed preliminary grading plan, including a table with the cut and fill quantities.
© 2020 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Inc. All rights reserved. Electric Power Research Institute
Joe Stekli, Senior Technical Leader jstekli@epri.com
Michael Bolen, Principal Project Manager mbolen@epri.com
Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in learning more about our Tracker Topography Constraint Analysis (TTCA) using Geo Future’s Bulldozer tool, for any tracker project in any place in the world; call us at +1 415 793 9156.
Contact
(415) 793-9156
General Inquiries
