EAI perspectives

Software is surely eating the world, and it is as surely eating the world of solar power too.

Utility scale solar power plants offer the digital industry a problem they would love to solve - distributed assets, significant number of transactions/operations to be undertaken on these assets on a regular basis, and outcomes dependent on a complex phenomenon such as weather.

If you are from the digital sector, the above context will make you think of IoT & sensors, automation of operations through robots, inspections though drones and other automated systems, predictive analytics for maintenance, and big data and analytics for forecasting of weather and environmental data. And all these integrated with conventional software systems for distributed systems such as SCADA.

It’s a no-brainer that if all these digital solutions are put to work in a seamless manner, the efficiencies brought in have the potential to significantly enhance yields and decrease costs.

Some of the above are being offered by solution developers such as SenseHawk. While this startup's software has a higher focus on the construction part of the solar power plant value chain, their drone based solutions for solar power plant inspections, and solutions for solar power plant O&M automation help them position themselves as a fairly comprehensive digital solution provider for the utility scale solar power plant developer.

The entry barriers for startups are relatively low for digital solutions (compared to deep tech solutions) for most sectors, including solar. Which is where those offering solutions that can digitize large portions of solar power plant value chain (from construction to end of life) stand a better chance at success than standalone digital solution providers.

Team EAI wishes SenseHawk the very best!