Scanifly, a leading solar software for the design, field, permitting, and operations stages of a solar project, announced integrations with a variety of remote data sources as part of its new preliminary design solution, Scanifly Prelim.
Scanifly Prelim offers Contractors a budget-conscious remote design solution, with all the features of Scanifly3D, including the ability to create a PV layout, production estimate, and shading analysis within minutes. The Prelim product is particularly useful for Contractors who have their own internal proposal and financing tools, or are seeking to consolidate their design solutions, and broader software stack, onto one platform.
To further enhance the quality of preliminary designs, Scanifly added Nearmap’s leading aerial data coverage, as well as imagery from well-known satellite imagery providers Google Maps, Bing, and Mapbox. Scanifly also incorporated the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) publicly available LiDAR data. The “light detecting and ranging” data is commonly used as a reference for modeling a site and remotely estimating a project’s shading.
The LiDAR data can also be viewed with Scanifly’s drone-based models, which are already equal in accuracy to other on-site tools, like the Solmetric SunEye. This considerably improves the ability to estimate shading during the fall and winter months, when dormant deciduous trees may not display their full shading impact due to the lack of foliage present at the time of data capture. This reinforces Scanifly’s patented Viewshed shading technology and hyper-local shading simulations that are already approved by numerous regulators and lenders as bankable.
“The addition of Nearmap, satellite imagery providers, and LiDAR data positions Scanifly to be a comprehensive platform for many stages of a residential and commercial solar project’s life,” said CEO Jason Steinberg. “All of Scanifly’s customer-facing people previously worked for solar contractors or construction companies, including as solar surveyors, designers, and installers. We are eager to support our fellow solar professionals and build technology that improves the quality of workmanship, safety, and speed for Contractors of all sizes.”