Digital Tech + Energy Transition: Drones Helping Build The Largest Solar Farm

This is the energy transition:

1.3 GW of solar power in Tx
$1.6 BN project value
600 construction jobs

How digital solutions enable:

ENTIRE project site was mapped & developed via @DroneDeploy imagery and analytics, and the ongoing construction is monitored by @DroneDeploy https://t.co/0P7jFxO3ms

— John Tough (@JohnJTough) November 19, 2020

On Wednesday, Invenergy announced the development of the largest solar farm in America. The solar farm is 1.3 GW, costs $1.6 billion and will employ 600 construction workers. (Invenergy is an anchor Limited Partner in my VC firm, Energize Ventures)

The scale of this project is astounding. The largest existing solar development is 650MW, meaning this site nearly doubles the previous record. I suspect we will be seeing many more in this new scale band over the coming years.

To me, perhaps one of the most enjoyable parts of this transaction is that DroneDeploy enabled this scale. Energize led the Series C in 2018 with a thesis that aerial mapping and analytics will positively impact renewable development. Over the last few years DroneDeploy worked with Invenergy to improve the DD product so that the mapping and analytics solution could go from mapping hundreds of acres to tens of thousands of acres. This is exactly the intersection of digital technologies driving scale that otherwise could not be possible.

Here is a photo of the DroneDeploy team at an Invenergy site in 2018!