Streamline your building process
Let Helios help you to build as planned and deliver as promised. With handy built-in tools you streamline communication with subcontractors as well as your customers.
On-site Survey
Once a customer has signed the dotted line, it is good practice to perform an on-site survey prior to the actual installation date, to identify whether the digital twin is accurate and installation as per the design is feasible.
Helios has a built-in functionality that helps on-site engineers check local conditions against assumptions and the design made by their sales engineering colleague in the office. Using a tablet or other mobile device, any difference found during the survey can be registered and tasks subsequently created. Everything is dealt with in the cloud which enables a very effective iterative design process.
Many installers use the on-site survey to formalize outstanding things with their customer such inverter location, DC cabling and inverter monitoring. Helios can also be used for this purpose with an option to make end-customer actively sign off on the survey outcome.
Documentation and permitting
Helios performs hundreds of checks on your system design for local safety and standards compliance with breakdowns and formulas for string sizing, inverter power, fire-code setback violations and more.
In some markets, a permit is required prior to installation. Helios can generate outputs detailing (parts of) the PV system design as captured in the Digital Twin such as roof layouts, ballast plans, wiring diagrams, project overviews, etc. Whether you want to instruct your installers or get your plans approved by authorized bodies, Helios supports you all the way so you can simply sell solar.
Ordering
Once the customer has signed off on exactly what is going to be built and has authorized the plans it is time to order components. In Helios you can easily generate a complete item list including solar panels, inverters and all balance of system items such as cables and connectors.
This item list can be ordered directly from Autarco or exported via CSV for further processing in your 3rd party ERP system. When ordering directly from Autarco, all product serial IDs are automatically uploaded into Helios so you have your records complete automatically. This also goes for solar panel flash tests.
Commissioning
Whether you’ve built a small residential system or a large commercial rooftop system, a thorough commissioning process after installation is critical to be confident that the yields as simulated are achieved during the operational phase. It is a vital check to make sure the as-built system matches the digital twin, that the project was executed as planned and that any subcontractors have fulfilled their obligations.
Commissioning tends to be a laborious and time consuming task whereby documents from multiple sources need to come together. With Helios it’s a breeze because you’ve already created the Digital Twin in the design phase.
Once you’ve set up inverter monitoring, the commissioning functionality automatically checks if monitoring values match expected values and all measurements taken by the on-site engineer, such as string resistance, are easily stored for later reference.
Registration
During commissioning you check if the as-built stage matches the digital twin. If there are any differences found, it is important to resolve them and make sure that, in the end, the Digital Twin is an adequate representation of the actual system installed. Only then should the build phase be completed through the registration process whereby all serial numbers of components used and photographic references are combined with the Digital Twin to finalize the as-built state of the system.
That baseline state serves as the foundation for asset management during the operations phase and can be verified by 3rd party insurers in the event an insured performance guarantee is requested.