raptormaps.com

Raptor Maps, a Boston-based software company focused on helping enterprise solar companies adopt drone technology to reduce asset management costs and increase plant production, is proud to announce that it has been chosen to support SOLVs drone operations in regards to post-processing and reporting on PV plant inspections. Raptor Maps software will be used for all commercial, industrial, and utility-scale solar installations managed by the SOLV team across the US, totaling over 4 GW of solar PV assets. Raptor Maps enables us to quickly and effectively perform the drone inspection, can support our wide range of sites under management, and provides clear and actionable reports for our field team on what items need to be fixed versus monitored,” said Reegan Moen, Business Development Manager of SOLV, Inc., a Swinerton company. Analytics generated from the inspection are delivered inside the Raptor Maps web-based software platform, with specifics provided on the exact location of each anomaly following existing location tags, each anomaly’s impact on energy production, and a prioritization of all issues for streamlined decision making regarding further investigation in the field.

The goal of this specific post is to clarify how to reduce your drone solar inspection and flight time by more than 75%* by adjusting the sidelap (lateral overlap) of your drone flight to 20%. To reduce your inspection flight times, and collect the highest quality imagery, you should adjust your sidelap (lateral overlap) to 20% and abandon the idea of creating a thermal map. This will allow you to reduce your drone PV inspection time by 75% and produce higher quality reports and deliverables with both radiometric thermal and high-definition visual spectrum imagery of the solar site inspected. *This number is based on the comparison of 80/20 overlap in your thermal flight plan to the industry standard 85/85 overlap of a thermal mapping flight plan.

Raptor Maps, a Boston-based software company focused on helping enterprise solar companies adopt drone technology to reduce asset management costs and increase plant production, is excited to announce that it has reached an agreement with one of the US’ leading solar companies, Cypress Creek Renewables, to support their internal UAS team with data-analytics and reports from PV plant inspections. Raptor Maps software will be used by the Cypress Creek UAS team to automate the processing and generate reports on over 300 drone solar inspections to be performed in 2019

Raptor Maps, the global leader in aerial thermography software, released a first of its kind industry report on the factors that most affect production. The company leveraged its data repository of digital photovoltaic (PV) systems to query 2,900 MW across 18 countries and 6 continents to help PV system owners and operators benchmark and improve their portfolios. Classifications included in the study include equipment (e.g., inverter, combiner, tracker), environmental (e.g., shadowing, soiling), and module-level findings (e.g., cracking, delamination, and activated bypass diodes). The fact that we can encode module-by-module analytics into a global, geospatial PV data structure, and simplify it into a digestible summary, is just the beginning of the bright future that lies ahead for PV.