ICT Requirements Analysis for Enterprise Networks Supporting Solar Power Plants

Establishing solar power plants are being accepted worldwide as a source of renewable energy. The Total Life Cycle (TLC) of these plants [1] lasts a few decades and includes the three main stages of (i) design and engineering, (ii) construction and commissioning, and the long term (iii) operation and maintenance. A number of different stakeholders are typically involved and contracted that together produce, parameterize, operate, and maintain these plants. Each solar plant is then developed as a complex, one-ofa-kind, massively customized product, which is enhanced by a large number of varied services, either provided as software systems or as business services supported by humans and/or robots. ICT support for the TLC of the solar power plants is challenging. We propose to establish enterprise networks in form of long term alliances, in order to enhance the functionality effectiveness for coworking and co-innovation among the involved stakeholders in this area. This network establishes the common ICT platform and the tools supporting interoperability and secure sharing and exchange of distributed data. The paper provides results from early stages of our goal-oriented requirements engineering [2], mostly focused on domain analysis, requirement elicitation, and stakeholders’ verification/agreement. It identifies the high level ICT requirements for this environment, through analyzing its life cycle stages, main entities, stakeholders, and base functionality. This paper concludes with the synthesis of our findings into five classes of ICT requirements.