Only solar analytical tool to leverage socio-economic and climate data to deliver unprecedented accuracy in predictive analytics

Lausanne, Switzerland - SmartHelio, a Swiss-based solar software developer, is launching its AI-powered Suite, which can achieve up to 98.5% accuracy in GHI/wind resources forecasting and 95% in failure prediction, de-risking solar investments for both future photovoltaic (PV) plants and brownfield acquisitions. The Suite includes SmartHelio's predictive Autopilot solution, which delivers predictive analytics capabilities, and the Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) tool, which leverages meteorological data and climatic events to help investors and solar plant owners make informed investment decisions. SmartHelio will unveil its AI-powered Suite at RE+ 2024, taking place September 9-12 in Anaheim, California.

"The management of PV plants is fraught with inefficiencies, primarily due to fragmented data and outdated reporting methods that delay decision-making and expose investors to significant financial risks. Addressing these challenges is crucial for improving performance and profitability in the industry," said Govinda Upadhyay, CEO of SmartHelio. "Many tools offer market performance enhancements, but plants using SmartHelio's AI-powered solution have seen as much as a sixfold return on investment."

Climate Risk Assessment (CRA) Tool

The CRA tool is the only tool to integrate socio-economic data such as urbanization trends (deforestation, aerosol concentration) and other microclimatic factors. It forecasts solar irradiance and wind speed for a given solar farm by processing over 100 variables, including historical and real-time weather data and forecasts, local environmental factors like proximity to a lake, ocean, desert, or mountain, global climatic indices like El Nino/La Nina, dipoles, or air, land, and ocean temperature increases, and human factors like pollution and urbanization for a particular area.

Autopilot Platform

The Autopilot platform provides recommendations for future development and for operating the plants at the highest capacity with the lowest costs, enabling operators and owners to prevent downtime and reduce costs of operations/replacement by 80%.

AI-powered Suite

For the first time, customers using SmartHelio's AI-powered Suite, which combines Autopilot and the CRA tool, can see not only how climate change will impact the future performance of their PV plants but also how they can take future evolutions into account in today's decisions. The solution includes a sophisticated component selection feature, allowing operators flexibility in choosing their solutions to ensure the most effective components are used for solar installations, ensuring compatibility, safety, and cost-efficiency. By optimizing resource allocation, SmartHelio's solution helps operators reduce costs and improve overall system performance without relying on a single solution or provider.

Using the AI-powered Suite allows customers to lower costs, increase efficiency, and increase revenue in their solar operations to overcome inefficiencies, improve decision-making, and ensure investors avoid financial risks. By optimizing resource allocation, SmartHelio's solution helps operators reduce costs and improve overall system performance without relying on a single solution or provider. In addition, the SmartHelio solution uses time-series data (current and voltage), even in an unstandardized format, to feed its physics-based algorithms and predict failures such as inverter downtime and tracker dysfunction.

Case Study #1: Long-term forecasting to design climate-resilient assets

In response to a client's challenges with unrealistic forecasts and underperformance of their future 500MWp solar site in Spain, SmartHelio implemented an advanced climate study and probabilistic analysis. By integrating climate change modeling and Deep Learning models, SmartHelio enhanced the forecasting accuracy to 95-98% over the next 25 years, accounting for factors like urbanization, climatic events, and microclimatic elements. This precise forecasting tool enabled the client to redesign the solar system, improving its resilience to climate dynamics. The result was a significant increase in aggregated annual energy to 1.18 MWh/m² and an additional revenue of millions.

Case Study # 2: Plant acquisition using CRA and One-Time Diagnostic report

A leading oil company faced challenges acquiring a portfolio of underperforming PV plants due to chaotic and low-quality data, making thorough performance analysis difficult. SmartHelio's One-Time Diagnostic tool was deployed to enrich unstandardized and missing data, streamline the technical due diligence process, quickly analyze the available data, and generate comprehensive health reports. The tool provided the client with a clear understanding of hidden losses and performance issues (current and future), enabling an informed acquisition decision. The Climate Risk Assessment tool also forecasts realistic future cash flows. The client also leveraged SolarGPT, an LLM model with conversational capabilities, for fast and accurate reporting. The impact was significant: the initial data review time was reduced to 10 days, with a final decision made within 1-1.5 months. The solution also provided financial insights, correlating technical findings with financial KPIs to support warranty claims and strategic investment decisions.

SmartHelio, named the Start-Up of the Year at RE+ 2023 in Las Vegas, will be exhibiting at RE+ 2024 in Anaheim. Visit SmartHelio's Booth (MP 101) in the Platinum Exhibition Area in the Anaheim Marriott to learn more.

About SmartHelio

SmartHelio, a B Corporation-certified AI company, developed software that predicts failures and forecasts the long-term production of solar plants. They aim to make renewable assets profitable and sustainable to accelerate the energy transition. With offices in Switzerland, the U.S., and India, the company's pioneering products, including the Climate Risk Assessment tool and Autopilot predictive software, are designed to ensure peak solar asset performance by 10%, increase revenue, and reduce manual interventions by 80%. Learn more at https://smarthelio.com/.

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Contact Information

Wendy Prabhu
Mercom Capital Group
Email: media@mercomcapital.com
Phone: +1.512.215.4452