As 2024 comes to a close, we’re reflecting on an exciting year of growth, innovation, and customer success. This year, we delivered powerful updates across our product suite, making it easier than ever for solar operators to manage their assets, track performance, and remediate issues efficiently - more than 120 new features to be a bit more precise. Here's a look at the major updates that defined 2024 and what they mean for your solar operations.
Autonomy Takes Flight with Sentry
Remotely operated drone dock technology, aka “drone-in-a-box”, technology has transformed how solar asset owners and operators collect inspection data, eliminating the need for an on-site pilot. This drastically reduces both operational costs and time-to-action, and increases the frequency and flexibility at which you are able to conduct visual analytics of your solar plants. However, to unlock its full potential for solar applications, you need advanced software designed to execute highly specialized and automated missions.
Enter Raptor Solar Sentry.
Sentry enables you to launch and manage remote drone missions directly from your desk, providing unparalleled flexibility, rapid response times, and fully automated data collection tailored to solar-specific needs. Whether scheduling inspections at regular intervals or triggering a mission based on an alert or event, Sentry puts the power of remote operations at your fingertips.
Precision Planning, Every Time
Sentry ensures that every mission collects high-quality data that can be analyzed at scale. Key variables like camera angle, altitude, and image resolution are automatically optimized for each inspection type, eliminating user error and ensuring actionable insights.
Real-World Impact
Here are just a couple of examples of how Sentry is making a difference:
Rapid Root Cause Analysis: Remotely investigate alerts to pinpoint the cause before dispatching technicians. This ensures crews are focused on remediation, not investigation.
Streamlined Capacity Testing: One asset owner used Sentry to diagnose and resolve issues during capacity testing, reducing their remediation timeline by 80% and staying on track for Commercial Operation Date (COD) milestones.
With Sentry, inspections become a proactive tool for managing and improving plant performance. Check out more case studies in our white paper here.
Deploying Sentry on Your Solar Assets
Curious about whether Sentry is the right fit for your operations? For asset owners and operators, Raptor Maps offers fleet assessments to identify assets that would benefit the most and provides proof-of-concept deployments to demonstrate its value.
Request a proof of concept here and explore how Sentry can revolutionize your solar workflows.
Inspecting AC to DC Health and Everything in Between
More than a dozen visual analytics categories
We expanded our visual analytics capabilities to tackle more than a dozen use cases across the entire solar plant lifecycle.
Here are some of our new use cases:
Erosion and Stormwater Monitoring: With geospatial polygons to mark detected issues on the Digital Twin, you can toggle between problem types or severity levels for precise insights into environmental compliance and stormwater pollution prevention.
Construction Progress Monitoring: Verify proper installation to make sure project timelines stay on-track. No more manual validation of your subcontractor reports.
Wiring Management Inspections: Identify thermal anomalies, shrink-back issues, or other connector problems that can lead to arc flashes to prevent fires and costly downtime.
Critical Infrastructure Inspections: Perform safer, remote inspections of substations or interconnection points, mitigating exposure to high-voltage scenarios.
Using Raptor Solar Sentry allows you to automate these inspections and remotely launch data collection missions without sending someone out to the site.
Workflow in Action: For instance, after an automated Sentry inspection detects issues with a structural BMP, you can assign a Task for remediation from the Digital Twin. After remediation, subsequent inspections through Sentry can verify the resolution.
There are now more than a dozen different visual analytics unlocked through our AI-powered analytics engine - check them out here.
Same-Day Inspection Results for C&I
We launched Raptor Solar DG for the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector, empowering drone pilot-trained technicians to capture and analyze high-priority thermal anomalies within 90 minutes. By addressing these issues on the same day, you reduce the need for multiple truck rolls and ensure faster resolutions.
New Order Management Experience
Managing your inspection orders is now seamless. The Orders Management Tool lets you track all inspection orders across your portfolio, including automated missions for Sentry users.
Expanded Hardware Support
We’ve extended our platform’s compatibility to include Skydio VT300 drone models, enabling better flexibility and precision for your inspection needs.
A More Intuitive Way to Understand Your Solar Plants
April saw a major leap forward in our Digital Twin experience for how solar operators can visualize and manage plant data. Think of it as the Google Maps of your solar site: a GPS-accurate digital reconstruction enriched with operational data for every piece of equipment.
New Data Layers and Anomaly Tracking
With new layers like Technician Notes and Tasks, and support for geospatial polygons for area-specific issues like erosion, the Digital Twin makes it easier to toggle between data views and focus on what matters most. Interactive strings and circuit blocks bring granular insights into equipment-level performance. Take an interactive tour of the Digital Twin here.
Anomaly Lifecycle Tracking
The addition of anomaly lifecycle tracking has transformed how teams manage solar plant issues:
Anomaly Status Updates: Users can update the status of anomalies, such as marking them resolved after remediation.
Integrated Technician Tasks: When a task is closed out on the Mobile App, the associated anomaly automatically updates to reflect its resolved status.
Streamlined Reporting: Using the anomaly status feature makes remediation reporting easier and allows you to track the impact of you and your team’s hard work.
API and Data Model Upgrades
We’ve updated our API endpoints and added detailed documentation, enabling seamless integration with your internal systems.
Fieldwork Management That Just Makes Sense
With the enhanced Technician Tasks flow, remediation is now linked directly to anomaly lifecycle tracking. This ensures that resolved tasks accurately update anomaly statuses in real time. Check out this workflow live in our interactive tour here.
Bulk Task Automation: From the Digital Twin, users can trigger multiple technician tasks in one action, dramatically reducing manual effort.
Integrated Anomaly Lifecycle: This integration allows asset managers to easily monitor remediation progress and report on team efficiency.
This One’s for You, Technicians: The New Raptor Solar App
Our technician-first updates to our Mobile App ensure that field teams have the tools they need to stay productive, even in remote locations.
An Upgraded Offline-First Experience
Technicians can now queue updates to the Digital Twin, upload site images, and add notes, even when offline. Once connectivity is restored, all changes sync automatically.
Selective Downloads for Flexibility
New download options allow technicians to selectively download portions of the Digital Twin, reducing unnecessary data loads and keeping essential information at their fingertips.
Data Layers On-the-Go
The Mobile App now supports the Technician Tasks data layer, allowing technicians to toggle between data views just like on the desktop platform.
See user documentation here to learn more, and download the app here.
Next steps
From the civil engineering on your site down to the wiring on the back of your panels, the Raptor Solar platform provides you detailed, up-to-date data on the conditions and performance of your solar fleet so that your team has the intel they need to do their jobs effectively, quickly, and safely.
