Today, Raptor Maps is launching Sentry for Construction which will bring elevated levels of automation and quality control throughout a solar asset’s construction phase. While our existing solution, Sentry for Operations, is already widely deployed – 100+ docked drones across over 18 GW of solar assets – we are excited to bring this same operational paradigm upstream into the construction phase, which requires high degrees of data precision and frequency.
In the construction of solar assets, project delays are common occurrences, and quality control protocols are critical. Research shows that 85% of inspected projects have major issues that need urgent correction. In part, this is because traditional QA/QC walkdowns during construction typically sample just 10–20% of a site. This creates a gap for issues to slip through the cracks and affect operations. In fact, Raptor Maps data showed that average power loss on day 1 for new assets commissioned in 2025 was already 4.46%
However, with autonomous drones stationed permanently on site, Sentry for Construction empowers asset owners and their EPCs to cost-effectively gather installation quality and progress data on 100% of an asset. This more robust view enables asset owners to de-risk construction and get sites toCOD on-time with a clean bill of health. Read on to learn more about how Sentry for Construction works to drive these outcomes.
Installation Progress and Quality Tracked with Precision
There are two core inspection protocols in the broader Sentry for Construction solution – Construction Monitoring and Construction Quality.
Construction Monitoring inspections give a weekly view of equipment installation progress. Sentry is flown remotely by the Raptor Maps’ ROC team, and reports will be delivered the following day. These reports produce counts and percent-installed figures for piles, trackers, modules, inverters, and combiners, all broken down by block. This information is geolocated in a dynamic, interactive Digital Twin of the site. These inspections will also report information on civil conditions, yielding detailed data on erosion, drainage, vegetation status, and perimeter conditions to support SWPPP compliance.
Construction Quality inspections are flown at low altitudes, and gather insights on every block after installation, providing highly granular quality insights for key components ahead of mechanical and electrical completion. Mechanical quality inspections look at tracker systems, searching for an array of detailed issues such as: askew bearing housing assemblies, cracked bushings, incorrect damper orientation, and driveline misalignment. Electrical quality inspections search for wire management issues, flagging anomalies on components such as junction boxes, connectors, and CAB lines.
Across both core inspection areas, all issues are automatically logged to a dynamically updated punchlist, and geolocated in the Digital Twin
Intuitively access imagery on any component of your site in the Digital Twin
What Differentiates Sentry for Construction
100% site coverage, not a 10–20% sample. The standard for construction QA/QC today is a manual walkdown of a 10–20% sample of a site. It's labor-intensive, slow, and error-prone. Conversely, Sentry for Construction inspects every module across every row in every block, giving owners and EPCs a complete visual system of record. Sentry is synced to your construction timelines, so it inspects the blocks as they reach mechanical and electrical completion. This system of record serves as a source of truth that can be shared across the numerous entities involved in a construction build.
Serial defects caught before they scale. Once the Golden Row is built, it is the comparative standard for finding defects in workmanship, products, and environmental standards. Whenever our inspections find multiple of the same defect, it is automatically flagged within the ‘Serial Defect Watch’ tile in a site’s dashboard. This gives owners and EPCs the timely, detail oriented insights they need to prevent detailed mechanical or electrical issues from scaling up as the site is built.
One-day turnaround. After each Construction Monitoring flight, inspection data is processed and delivered within a day of capture, so reports and punchlists keep pace with the build. That speed helps teams hold schedules, avoid liquidated damages, and correct install issues while crews are still working in the block.
The Digital Twin enables users to quickly check the installation status of each piece of equipment over time
Part of a bigger vision
Sentry for Construction extends a belief that runs through everything built at Raptor Maps: solar assets perform best when decisions are made on clean, frequent data with as little lag as possible. In operations, that means proactively catching the anomalies that drive downtime. In construction, it means finding installation errors rapidly before they are repeated on 20,000 more rows.
Today, construction and operations data live in separate worlds, and a lot of context is lost at handover. Sentry for Construction closes that gap. The same Digital Twin that tracks progress and quality during the build supports EPC warranty documentation and becomes the system of record for O&M after COD.
The result is fewer surprises at commissioning, less rework, and assets that start their operating life performing the way they were designed to. Talk to our team to see Raptor Construction on your next project.
The Construction Dashboard flags potential serial defects in equipment installation, as well as delays in installation progress against your schedule
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.
