I was in Kalgoorlie (of the Wangkatja people) this past week for work in a gold mine. This job was similar to the one in Queensland a few months ago. Instead of a 150kW solar farm, this one was a 2.3MW solar farm. The farm consisted of 140 trackers that required finalisation of its commission. Essentially, I was troubleshooting any physical and digital bugs. Since it was my first time to the west coast of Australia, I was pretty keen to check out things like the weather, people, and infrastructure.

First thing that I learned was how long it can take to get to Kalgoorlie from Tasmania – at least 12 hours there and 24 hours coming back; rural to the outer regional, hey! It was fantastic to see the landscape change from the metro to the outer regional areas, especially by the colour of the soil. As you can see in these series of images, this was the difference in the landscape of only ~600km.

Even though I only received a brief rundown of the current operational situation, I was keen to get back into the field and assist the engineers with fixing any issues that can have a negative impact on the data analysis. I was able to drive through the back end of Kalgoorlie/Boulder and see the parts that weren’t the main drag.

When I got on-site for the first time, I was able to walk the field, observe the layout & processes flow, and monitor any discrepancies that may have been produced during its commission. As there were a few issues of differing degrees (seeing on the field and hearing about prior to flying out), I decided to triage and prioritise them by importance. This importance was a mixture of immediate and long-term mission critical priority. Along with me was one electrician, whose time was split between assisting me and attending to his supervisor’s tasks to finalise the commission of the field.

Being in the elements of Kalgoorlie in October has the potential to create exhaustion and fatigue for the two of us. This can very easily lead to poor memory and judgement. We kept one another motivated by staying hydrated with electrolytes, listening to heavy metal (some I’d not listened to since I was 15), and sharing stories; seeing who could hold out laughing the longest. Knowing that I was heading into this kind of environment, I decided to make a Google Sheet to depict the outline of the solar field. I integrated a list of trackers (for us to diagnose issues and resolve) and conditional formatting to display the tracker visually. Additionally, I did this as there were no physical markers for the electrician and I reference whilst out there, so this greatly assisted out memory, esepcially at 4pm.

=VLOOKUP($D$4:$S$13,$A$2:$A$28,1,0)

I was running a concurrent document that was keeping track of the panels, any issues found, and the steps included in resolving. This made things much easier to diagnose and resolve throughout the week as it allows us to observe the history of individual tracks over the short-term. I found this process fun, practical, and efficient, especially as I was communicating with various stakeholders along this farm’s supply chain – the mine’s management, the solar’s manufacturing management, particular solar parts manufacturer’s support, and the on-site electrician. I thoroughly enjoyed being in this position – the one responsible for communicating to various people in the specific way that is necessary to their job’s roles, tasks, and objectives.

Like any situation, I took aspects away from the job to update my personal way of working. I made sure to maintain communication (over WhatsApp), where possible and practical (see below). This was specific to: the morning of (reviewing the previous day’s issues and seeing any new additions), during to (being very clear and concise, especially as one of the main stakeholder’s English was an additional language), and afterwards (reviewing the day’s progress and any outstanding issues). These daily and continual checks made the goal posts for the week achievable, but also maintained the motivation and sense of achievement.

Using this map, can you guess where I was mainly from? Can you?

That’s right. JUST outside of the average coverage map. Nice. This made communication extremely frustrating as, depending on where you were located, meant you could send/receive data packets either immediately or with a 5 minute delay. I did a 30 minute ping test one day, whilst around the field, and it would vary between 30 ms, 68000 ms, and the dreaded ‘Request timeout for icmp_seq [n]’. I guessed the average ping rate would have been 25000 ms. Another reason for parsimony regarding communication. Necessary screenshots/photos were another story. *shudders*

It was a fantastic trip that included interesting work; the type of work that reminds me why I love the entire process of data. The creation is just as important as the analysis. Plus, it was also interesting to be near some land excavation through the use of explosives (see last image below). Especially since I wasn’t aware it was going to happen at a certain time.