Merlin Solar Technologies, Inc. (Merlin Solar) and Optio3 teamed up to deliver an integrated solar and remote operations monitoring solution to commercial transportation, first responder, motor coach, and transit fleets. The collaboration combines the power of Merlin Solar’s patented solar panel technology that is highly efficient, flexible and resilient under stressful environments with Optio3’s secure cloud-based IoT technology platform.
Technology advances are causing fleets with either new or existing vehicles, to add new equipment that increases power demand at the same time that regulations are requiring shorter and shorter idling times to reduce carbon footprints. Adding solar solutions with remote monitoring is enabling fleets to maintain high availability and reduce operating expenses while enjoying very positive Return on Investment (ROI).
This is especially important due to COVID, which has dramatically increased the demands on food delivery fleets, ambulance fleets, and last mile delivery vehicles for e-commerce while idling many other fleets, causing power loss and damaging batteries. Together, Merlin Solar and Optio3 provide clean auxiliary power and automated solutions to monitor and analyze all OBD and solar charging data, with sophisticated fault detection and diagnosis, automated alerts and notifications, single sign-on through relationships with in-cab telematics vendors, and APIs enabling integration with IT, ERP, and third party visualization platforms.
“Solar power is a proven high-ROI solution for fleet operators; reducing battery replacement, jump starts, and fuel consumption operating costs,” said Murali Venkatesan, founder and Chief Technology Officer of Merlin Solar. “Our patented, flexible, and rugged solar panel technology and market-leading high efficiency cell design gives Merlin Solar a leg up in the demanding environments typical to the transportation sector. By adding Optio3’s remote monitoring and alerting capabilities we are keeping fleets operating at record levels of availability. Optio3’s hyperscale, intelligent, highly secure cloud platform delivers predictive maintenance breakthroughs for our customers.”
“Fleets are intensely focused on attracting and retaining drivers, optimizing fuel consumption and equipment reliability, and meeting increasingly strict emission reduction rules,” said Sridhar Chandrashekar, Cofounder and CEO of Optio3. “Our Sentinel Remote Operations Management System provides visibility into thousands of operating parameters from the truck, the batteries, and the solar charge controller via our intelligent gateway device. This helps fleets virtually eliminate jump starts and ensures that they are putting trucks on the road that are healthy. Together with Merlin Solar, we are helping fleets reduce fuel consumption by gallons per day per truck, reducing tons of CO2, and keeping trucks rolling at the highest levels of fleet availability.”
Optio3 has existing and committed future deployments in commercial transportation fleets and mission-critical fleets that operate over 20,000 power units. Deployments with Merlin Solar have been on the road for over 2 years and are accelerating, including deployments in the US, Canada, Singapore, and the Philippines, while expanding into the transit/commute market.
