For cost and time, I know of nothing better
At Zewotherm the field sales team flies the roofs themselves, and Thorsten Hill plans the photovoltaics for the whole group from them. He used to count roof tiles on phone photos for that. Today the model goes straight into PV*SOL.
Source: Zewotherm OEM GmbH, zewotherm.com
“Rebuilding a roof in PV*SOL used to take me one to one and a half hours, depending on the building. Today I’m around 80 percent faster.”
Technical head of photovoltaic planning | Zewotherm OEM GmbH | Photovoltaic planning for the Zewotherm group | Drones: DJI Mini 3 Pro, DJI Mini 4 Pro
Planning for a whole group of companies
Thorsten Hill plans the photovoltaic systems for the entire Zewotherm group. Most of the buildings are detached houses. He is not the one on site, though: that is the field sales team, who record the roof with the drone and upload the images to the Airclip Cloud themselves. As soon as the model is ready, Hill takes over.
He is also the project lead for drones in the company. Zewotherm has bought around ten drones from Airclip, Mini 3 Pros and one Mini 4 Pro. Anyone new to the PV field team is handed one of them and gets a few hours of flying on the company grounds. That is where they practise the Hyperlapse recording, the circular flight around the house, and learn how the upload to the cloud works.
Counting tiles on a phone photo
Before the drone, Hill received phone photos of the roof, and they by no means always showed the whole roof surface. Along with them came the visible tile size.
“I counted the tiles and used them to calculate the roof area and every obstruction.”
That only worked as long as there were tiles on the roof. With trapezoidal sheeting, slate or plain tiles, all that was left were the customer’s own measurements, old building plans or a measurement on the satellite map, and that is inaccurate. A mistake in the measurement then only shows up during installation. At some point it was clear to Hill that this could not go on.
The first recording came from a subcontractor
Hill flies drones privately and started by looking around online. What he found there did not match what he was after. The push came from a subcontractor he also plans systems for, who was already using Airclip. He sent Hill his first Hyperlapse recording and asked whether he could do anything with it.
Hill read up on the website, tried it out himself and then called Airclip to order it for Zewotherm.
From the model into PV*SOL and K2
This is how it works today: the finished model goes into PV*SOL, where the planning happens. In K2 Hill designs the mounting system, then he writes the quote. With accelerated processing, he says, the model is ready within two to five minutes.
He sees the biggest difference in rebuilding the roof in PV*SOL. Depending on the building, that used to cost him an hour to an hour and a half, and not every roof could be rebuilt cleanly at all. With an interlocking hipped roof or another complex roof shape it gets complicated, even for experienced users.
Today he is around 80 percent faster.
“For cost and time, I know of nothing better.”
What he would tell a colleague
Asked what he would tell a colleague in the industry about Airclip, Hill does not talk about the software but about the people behind it.
“Whether it is technical support, sales or accounts, there is always someone available. You get an answer straight away, and everyone is very friendly.”