Nextracker, a Flex company, says D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI), a developer and producer of renewable energy in North America, will be upgrading its entire solar fleet that uses Nextracker’s smart solar trackers with TrueCapture energy enhancement and NX Navigator monitoring software.
Through machine learning and real-time data analytics, Nextracker software continues to enhance plant performance with new features that deliver proven financial benefits and production gains. Launched in 2019, NX Navigator helps power plant operators to efficiently monitor and control their solar assets across a wide range of weather conditions including hail, snow, high winds and hurricanes.
Nextracker’s TrueCapture software solution optimizes the performance of PV systems by employing robust data analytics, advanced algorithms and angle adjustments based on real-time conditions in the field. As an initial adopter of the technology, DESRI has played a key role in helping Nextracker optimize the software and develop new monitoring and control platforms like NX Navigator.
“As an early adopter of TrueCapture three years ago, we benefited from increased energy yield production, lower operating costs and better availability,” says Bryan Martin, executive chairman of DESRI.
“Nextracker keeps adding functionality designed to further optimize our projects and is highly responsive to the input of our operations team to tune the platform. Earlier this year we started using NX Navigator’s snow shed capabilities at our northern sites to reduce losses attributed to snow cover. We are also implementing Navigator’s hail stow to help protect our systems from extreme weather in hail prone regions,” he adds.
DESRI has solar and wind sites totaling over 2,400 MW of aggregate capacity. DESRI’s 15 operating projects that utilize Nextracker will be augmented with TrueCapture and its new NX Navigator control platform, while DESRI’s Nextracker-contracted sites under construction will be using the software as a standard moving forward.
TrueCapture is being used on over 80 power plants on four continents worldwide. Production gains are site-specific and some sites have seen production gains of over 4%. The technology platform has been validated by third-party independent engineers including Black & Veatch, DNV-GL, Enertis, ICF, Leidos, Luminate, RINA and UL.
To learn more about Nextracker, TrueCapture and NX Navigator, click here.
