Raptor Maps secures funding, sets sights on scaling the solar industry with software and data

Raptor Maps, a solar software and data collection company, has raised $5 million in Series A funding in order to build up its solar lifecycle management software platform.

The funding was co-led by Blue Bear Capital, Data Point Capital and Buoyant Ventures, along with Congruent Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and Y Combinator.

According to Raptor Maps, the funding isn’t significant in just terms of capital raised, it shows “the recognition of the impact we’ve already had on the solar industry and how we plan to enable it to aggressively scale.”

Scaling the solar industry is something that Raptor Maps has focused on time and again, doing so namely through operations and maintenance (O&M). Since founding, the company has collected project data from more than 25 GW of installations across 35 countries, with notable customers like Enel Green Power, asset owner Greenbacker Renewable Energy, McCarthy Building Companies, O&M providers QE Solar, SOLV and several publicly-traded solar panel manufacturers.

The data is collected is via infrared imaging from both airplanes and un-piloted drones. The large set of data that Raptor has collected thus far is then used to show to customers what’s going on with inverters, combiner boxes, tilts on trackers and site issues like vegetation, flooding and security risk. And while all of this is done from afar, the software can focus on every single individual solar module, giving detailed insight into diodes, cell level issues and soiling.

Raptor Maps plans to use this new funding to increase its number of employees by at least 50% — the company currently employs 17 people. Among these new hires, CEO Nikhil Vadhavkar plans to bring on software engineers, a technical product manager, a director of sales and a number of account executives.