By Andrew Griffiths, VP of asset management, Nextpower
Utility-scale solar asset owners are under pressure to perform—amid harsher weather conditions, aging fleets, and rising expectations for reliability and long-term value. Luckily, we have the data and technology to enable our customers to rapidly respond to the moment.
At Nextpower, we're transforming how utility-scale solar plants are deployed, built and maintained, and our new Remote Monitoring Center (RMC) is a cornerstone of that transformation.
Located in our Nashville, Tenn., office, the RMC is where our Technical Operations and Customer Service team proactively monitors the status of Nextpower tracker systems under warranty. From this hub, we help reduce risk for billions of dollars in energy infrastructure with predictive risk management. By monitoring system health in the RMC, we ensure that our tracker systems perform when it matters most.
The RMC is especially crucial as extreme weather events increase. If an extreme weather event is approaching, our team can assess stow readiness and collaborate with operators to verify systems are prepared to respond.
“Vaisala’s Xweather team is proud to have been chosen as Nextpower’s provider of hail threat forecasting services and to have been showcased at the grand opening of their new state of the art Remote Monitoring Center in Nashville in December. Both Vaisala and Nextpower are jointly supporting solar farm hail risk mitigation to improve the industry’s ability to withstand the severe hail events by implementing industry's next generation of forecasting technology. This will translate into fewer high-cost claims and ultimately reduce insurance claims and better profitability for the solar industry.” - Michael Scripps, utility scale solar manager, North America, Vaisala
Hail response
While the RMC location is new, our advanced understanding of hail stow is well established and verified by leading insurance providers. Our tracker system enables project operators to hail stow to 60 or 75 degrees in as little as 2 minutes. As a result, Nextpower projects earn lower insurance premiums in hail-prone regions.
The RMC also demonstrates the value of our connected systems architecture—our platform can deploy software and firmware updates remotely, supporting both performance optimization and risk mitigation. This dynamic connectivity powers advanced strategies like Automated Hail Stowing via a customer-selected weather monitoring platform.
In 2025 alone, we monitored and performed a post event survey for over 41 extreme weather events, ranging from hailstorms to hurricanes. Our systems executed 2,170 hail stows worldwide, with our customers reporting a less than 0.007% module breakage rate associated with hail events. Learn how leading U.S. developer DESRI is leveraging automated hail stow across a 2.4 GW portfolio in this case study.
What’s next?
We are building a culture of risk mitigation and project resilience, and the tracker system monitoring at RMC is just one example. Whether it’s on a new installation or a legacy project site, our customers benefit from a future-ready approach to operational resilience.
In 2026, we’ll be integrating data streams from the NX Ranger™ autonomous QA robot inspection and our NX Vantage™ smoke and fire detection system, adding new layers of safety and operational intelligence. Our 2025 acquisition of Fracsun, an advanced soiling analytics and modeling technology deployed on 20+ GW globally, will further expand the parameters we can monitor and manage from the RMC.
Asset owners are under pressure to perform. Our job is to make that easier—with data, advanced control systems, and services that reduce operational risk, enable fast decision-making, and deliver results across a plant’s lifetime.