Palantir’s Partnership With Sonnedix: Analyzed
Why Palantir?
A London based company, Sonnedix, partnered with Palantir to join the digital revolution and maximize their production of solar energy.
Palantir will be supporting Sonnedix in their journey to capitalize on its vast renewables infrastructure. Streamlining operations through data driven decision making, as we assumed. The multi-million dollar partnership is for four years.
“Palantir will reshape our business by creating fully integrated tools that allow operators to see all our data in real time,” says Carlos Guinand, Co-founder and executive chairman of Sonnedix. “Our teams will rely on Foundry to make critical business decisions throughout our operations. The ultimate goal is to see Foundry throughout all facets of the company”
This makes a lot of sense since Palantir has worked with several energy companies before. BP and Kinder Morgan, to name a couple. They have experience working with renewable energies, oil, and gas in general.
Sonnedix will utilize Foundry in creating an ontological framework, a single source of truth. Allowing them to have predictive simulated models. Combining various business functions including finance, operations, and information technology to help scale as the business continues to grow.
With over 450 operational assets worldwide, Foundry will give operators a comprehensive overview of the energy supply. Allowing them to combine external data, such as weather and solar panel alignments, with internal data sources such as high scale sensor data and ERP systems for real-time decisions.
Meta Constellation
Palantir’s first commercial agreement with a pure play Renewable Energy company. Sonnedix needs MetaConstellation from Palantir to assist in the improvement of resources crucial to maintain Sonnedix’s vast number of solar plants. This is where satellites give real-time data using Edge AI, allowing for real-time decision making.
Previously, The Meta constellation software has been utilized in mission critical situations for governments. Ukraine was able to use the Meta Constellation product, tracking Russian tanks in real time. In the context of a solar power plant, if you're able to use AI/ML models in conjunction with satellite imagery to then identify trackers within solar panels that are misaligned, you can change those things rather quickly.
The results are better decisions, more consistent creation of energy and thus more money going to the bottom line.
The question becomes: What is the time to value in terms of money and overall speed that Sonnedix gets from that type of a service for their solar plants?
Likely substantial considering it is a stark contrast from the current manual check and see approach in place now. If it is substantial enough for them to move faster, be more efficient, make more money then Palantir proves its value proposition.
The Future Of Palantir In Renewable Energy
Renewable energy is the future. We know we're not going back to internal combustion engines, oil and gas. However, we do have to clean them up.
The reason why Tesla is as big as it is, is because it normalized the fact that we can revolutionize a green electrified movement. Tesla enabled mainstream adoption of Renewable Energy.
As a result of that, it created the capacity for all of these other companies in the world to take a risk on this.
Venture capitalists, who have money to allocate, became able to take a risk on these startups. Giving them the freedom and the opportunity to build. Palantir recognizes this shift and is positioning themselves accordingly.
“Sonnidex is a true Pioneer in the Renewables industry with an impeccable track record in Solar Technologies,” says Shyam Sankar, COO of Palantir. “As the world transitions its energy needs, it will be increasingly important for Industries to transition to new and renewable energy sources. Our partnership with Sonnedix represents our commitment to supporting renewable energy.”
Palantir works with Wejo, which is one of their SPAC investments that created an EV operating system software. Palantir has worked with Trafigura, which is tracking raw material supply chains to be able to tell companies what their carbon emissions are.
They've shown they can partner with companies that have an impact when it comes to climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Now this is a pure-play renewable energies partner. Renewable energy is only going to get exponentially bigger.
The only question is: Will Palantir be a player in the verticals of software that are used to help make these companies more efficient? Just like they are in oil and gas with Kinder Morgan and BP. Just like they are in Health care, Infrastructure, Supply chains, AI/ML …the opportunities for Palantir to scale across verticals is evident.
It is now a question of if they can execute - but partnerships like these are encouraging.
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