Solar Investments Flying to New Highs

Drone based solar inspections has become a growing trend in the market. (Image: Raptor Maps)

Raptor Maps announced their $5M Series A raise, with investments from notable investors in the space: Blue Bear Capital, Data Point Capital, Buoyant Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and Y Combinator.

“Our mission is to build software that enables the solar industry to scale,” says Nikhil Vadhavkar, CEO of Raptor Maps.

Raptor Maps provides tools to organize data, perform virtual inspections, and generate reports that seamlessly integrate into the workflows of solar asset owners.

Why does this matter?

• Raptor Maps provides a solution to assist with a 49% industry annual growth rate over the past decade.
• Since 2010, the cost of solar has decreased 85%, resulting in $1.3 trillion in solar investments, as well as an increase in capacity from 25 GW to 663 GW.
• To date, Raptor Maps has improved the project finance and asset management of over 25 GW in 35 countries.
• Raptor Maps’ solution applies has applications to site selection, surveying, build progress monitoring, and investment due diligence.

What’s next?

• As the solar investment tax credit (ITC) has started decreasing, there will be a need to cut costs of manufacturing, commissioning, and maintaining solar farms.
• Partners that work with Raptor Maps stand to benefit from process improvement and cost reductions.
• Raptor Maps is leading digitization of the solar industry. Not only will this accelerate innovation in the sector, but it will lead to decreased costs to develop and finance more solar farms.

Thoughts

Raptor Maps provides software and services to the solar industry that has great impact but is only part of the solution. It is what manufacturers do with the data and how they make improvements that will drive further growth — from decreasing costs, improving manufacturing practices, R&D into new and cleaner materials, etc. Investors should be focused on reducing carbon emissions, in addition to the transition to clean energy.

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