Software specialist Planno from the United Arab Emirates has launched software to automate the search for roof areas with potential for solar energy generation.
Planno, a software company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has launched subscription-based prospecting software for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar developers and planners to use to identify and qualify promising rooftops in a growing number of countries.
It automates several steps of the prospecting phase for commercial and industrial (C&I) rooftop project developers, “making the process faster and more data-driven,” said Daniel Domingues, founder and CEO of Planno.
“It provides an alternative to manual processes, but also a platform where opportunities can be organized, managed and shared within the development team,” Domingues said. pv magazine.
Planno uses geospatial artificial intelligence (AI), which uses satellite data, imagery and machine learning models, to detect viable roofs. The findings are supplemented with estimates of potential energy potential and business contacts.
There is a structured quality control process where Planno team members check that “what has been identified matches the real-world C&I characteristics and excludes irrelevant structures,” Domingues said.
The manual process involves scanning sources such as Google Maps and Google Earth to find large rooftops, or searching land registries, municipal platforms and business databases, and cold calling to identify prospects for each new market, Domingues said.
The first customers are located in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Cyprus and the United States. “To date, we have found the strongest traction in the Middle East, where our team is based, and South Africa, but we expect European adoption to grow significantly in 2026 as we open more markets,” Domingues said.
Currently it functions as a standalone solution and there is a long-term plan to provide integration with the tools developers already use, according to Domingues, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
The company recently announced that Spark Wave Energy, a Octopus power generation joint venture focusing on Portuguese C&I projects, as a new customer. According to Planno’s analysis, Portugal is home to 79,000 C&I rooftops with a potential capacity of 15.4 GW.
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