Locus Energy was recognized as the largest independent solar monitoring provider in the U.S. residential market for the second consecutive year in a joint GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting research report entitled "Global PV Monitoring: Technologies, Markets and Leading Players, 2014-2018."

The report, which provides the only comprehensive research on the solar photovoltaic (PV) monitoring market, also identified Locus Energy as the fastest-growing independent provider in the U.S. residential PV monitoring market. Specifically, the report cited Locus Energy's rapid growth as a key factor driving its leadership. The company more than doubled its fleet size in 2013, and expects to double it again in 2014.

"In a U.S. residential market flooded by free monitoring solutions from solar lease providers and inverter manufacturers, Locus Energy is the only independent monitoring provider with a strong market share in the segment," said Cedric Brehaut, consultant and market analyst at SoliChamba Consulting and author of the report. "Locus is clearly ahead of other independent vendors in the U.S. residential PV market, increasing its lead in 2013."

Locus Energy's leadership in the field stems from the fact that it is the only solar monitoring company in the industry that can provide its customers with an integrated metering and monitoring suite with both hardware and software. This complete package enhances its ability to supply real-time intelligence through monitoring solutions and advanced analytics, enabling customers to reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) costs and operational risk.

The report notes that in 2013, Locus Energy more than doubled its fleet size, thus maintaining the largest fleet among independent service providers (ISPs) in the U.S. residential segment. This year, Locus Energy has already installed an additional 5,000 systems, bringing its current fleet size to 35,000. When compared to key independent U.S. solar software monitoring competitors, Locus Energy has well over triple the number of systems in the field.

Because of Locus Energy's fleet size, it manages one of the largest performance data sets in the U.S. solar industry, uniquely positioning it to provide the highest quality advanced analytics solutions to its residential, commercial and utility-scale customers. The company processes vast amounts of real-time and historical data, pulling more than 30 million data points from its systems daily, with over 15 billion data points collected to date.

"The report confirms our continued status as the nation's top independent solar monitoring provider based on the number of sites under management," said Michael Herzig, CEO at Locus Energy.

"This recognition reflects the market's understanding of the value our hardware and software solutions bring to the solar industry. We are able to provide fleet and portfolio managers with smarter data and analytics that allow them to drive efficiencies and lower O&M costs."

"As the growth that we have seen over the past two years continues to compound, we can only expect the pace of our expansion to accelerate," he added.

In 2013, Locus led the industry by introducing the first revenue-grade integrated cellular smart meters, the LGate 120 and 320, which provide fleet operators with a consistent stream of performance data for uninterrupted billing and monitoring. The LGate's built-in data logging functions for collecting inverter data inside the smart meter were called to attention in the GTM report as a differentiated product offer.

Together with Locus' web-based solar monitoring SolarOS and SolarNOC platforms, fleet operators and managers are able to more efficiently gather data for troubleshooting, asset optimization and performance guarantee/billing functions, all of which are key to lowering O&M costs.