Increasingly, we see external consultants or internal procurement teams go full out on tender processes for solar operations and maintenance (O&M) contracts.
It is very thorough: detailed specs, mandatory site visits, competitive pricing rounds, requirements for certifications and credentials, and spreadsheet-heavy ranking and rating of bidders. But for what exactly? An R8,000/month contract on a 1 MW plant?
O&M is very important. If it's done poorly, performance drops, problems go unnoticed, warranties are voided, and costs mount. But there's a difference between importance and value. And the uncomfortable truth is that O&M contracts - especially on sub-5MW installations - are not high-value contracts.
The cost saving juice may just not be worth the contracting process squeeze.
The more structured and time-consuming the procurement process becomes, the more it costs - in time, fees, and internal resources. And in the case of solar O&M, those costs can easily outweigh any benefit of taking 10% off a service provider’s quote.
Especially when the winning bidder’s low price comes with a sub-scale organisation, a sub-par monitoring and reporting process, and no ability to scale-up when things go wrong.
So, what should matter?
Price should not be at the top of the list. O&M pricing shouldn’t vary wildly unless someone is cutting corners or doesn’t understand the contract scope. If your R9,000/month provider is being undercut by an R6,500/month new entrant, it’s worth asking how they plan to deliver. Are they just outsourcing to the cheapest local technician? Or skipping remote monitoring altogether?
What should be evaluated is the quality of monitoring and reporting systems, responsiveness and escalation procedures, the depth of technical skill and geographic presence, integration with the plant’s asset management or owner's systems, institutional experience with inverter suppliers, warranty claims, and site inspections and track record on uptime and SLA compliance
In short, it should be primarily about risk management and delivery, not small, generally marginal cost savings.
Solar O&M isn’t a commodity - it’s a long-term relationship. And in the age of 24/7 remote monitoring and fault detection, it’s a digital relationship as much as a physical one. The provider who only shows up for scheduled site inspections and panel cleaning is obsolete. The one who can keep the digital comms up, flags performance anomalies proactively and gives you clean reporting for your bosses? That is the one who earns their keep.
Procurement teams do important work. But the adjudication effort needs to be proportionate to the size and strategic value of the contract. And for small to mid-sized solar O&M, going overboard on process can be a distraction or worse, false economy.
Choose someone solid, like Decentral Energy. Then let them get on with it.
At Decentral Energy, we manage O&M across more than 140 plants - and we own more than half ourselves. So, while an individual contract might look small, our business operates at scale. We’ve built systems and teams that deliver consistent results because we have skin in the game. We don’t just service third-party plants - we protect our own performance and revenue, every day.
