Qcells unifies clean solar energy operations globally with Fabric

Qcells, one of the world’s largest solar panel manufacturers, is redefining how clean energy is produced, distributed, and serviced. With Qcells residential solar panels on one in three rooftops in the US, a growing fleet of energy storage systems, and demand for clean energy spiking across the globe, Qcells faced mounting constraints to scale its operations. Holding it back was its infrastructure. Built on fragmented open-source tools across thousands of decentralized sites, Qcells’ existing platform was slowing innovation, hindering customer expansion, and affecting its ability to offer solar energy to millions around the world. 

“We set our sights on streamlining operations in the US first by shifting our focus from energy troubleshooting to energy innovation,” says Sanjeev Lakkaraju, Senior Director of Data Engineering at Qcells North America. “We knew that unifying our data on a dependable, secure, AI-driven data platform would help us deliver on our mission to provide solar energy to communities around the world.”

Delivering on its mission with a unified data architecture

Qcells chose Microsoft Fabric and Azure to unify its fragmented data, fragile pipelines, and limited scalability. “Speed is innovation. Fabric streamlines operations by eliminating complexity and providing a single analytics pipeline that can accelerate time to market for new solutions,” says Youngchoon Park, President of Grid & Energy Service Business at Qcells North America.

Before the transformation, the Qcells tech team could only dream of connecting thousands of solar and energy storage assets into a single, responsive network. Now data flows seamlessly across the Qcells organization. Power BI dashboards bring real-time insights to every decision-maker, turning hours of manual reporting into instant, actionable intelligence. Semantic models ensure that everyone—from field technicians to executives—speaks the same data language, no matter what position they hold. And with Azure SQL as the highly secure, scalable backbone, Qcells can finally focus on what matters: delivering new energy solutions at speed.

“We’re thrilled this transformation was conceived, executed, and championed by our Qcells internal team,” says Lakkaraju. “The native connectors and low-code data flows in Fabric made interoperability with systems like Snowflake, SAP, and Salesforce much easier—so our small team could move a lot faster.”

Powering energy innovation that gets results 

With its transformed digital backbone, Qcells confidently launched two groundbreaking, customer-facing energy solutions: the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) portal and Fleet Manager platform—energy service solutions built on Azure. The VPP portal brings together solar panels, batteries, and EV chargers, turning everyday customers into active participants in the energy grid. With a few clicks, homeowners and businesses can sell surplus power back to the grid, earning rewards while strengthening community resilience. Meanwhile, the Fleet Manager platform gives Qcells’ operations teams a real-time window into every site, enabling predictive maintenance and seamless optimization across the country.

“Fabric Real-Time Intelligence and Power BI in our Fleet Manager platform gives us live visibility into thousands of sites, instantaneously,” says Shuai Zhang, Director of Grid & Energy Service Operations at Qcells North America. “Before Fabric, troubleshooting a single site could take hours. Now, with real-time insights, Qcells’s teams can spot and solve issues across thousands of sites in seconds, delivering energy reliability and cost efficiencies customers can feel.”

“In the past, deploying traditional solutions of this size could take years. With Microsoft Fabric, we accomplished product release from project inception in just nine months, achieving a nearly 50% improvement in time to market compared to our previous benchmarks,” says Park. “Also, scaling from hundreds to millions of users no longer requires additional management overhead, resulting in another 40% savings and a 25% decrease in site licensing fees. This is how we drive efficiency and innovation.”

“We can now respond to real-time grid events and provide instant insights to our stakeholders,” says Lakkaraju. “This has not only improved our operational agility but also accelerated our mission for clean energy."

Scaling confidently to better serve the world  

“We’re now scaling this unified approach to markets worldwide, offering rapid innovation, operational efficiency, and customer-centric solutions that fuel homes and businesses globally,” says Park. “We plan to offer our service to third parties, including OEMs, commercial partners, and global enterprises. Integration with Qcells will be as simple as flipping a switch. Fabric makes that possible.”  

With Microsoft, Qcells is poised to offer solar energy plus storage as an alternative to millions. “We’re not just moving faster—we’re innovating in incredible new ways to better serve our customers anywhere in the world,” says Zhang. 

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