Company honored for applying robotics technology to improve solar farm reliability and performance
LAS VEGAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AI—TerraWise earned the title of 2025 Start-Up of the Year during the annual pitch competition for early-stage companies hosted by Mercom Capital Group at RE+, North America’s largest clean energy conference. The recognition highlights TerraWise’s groundbreaking autonomous rovers and AI-driven platform, which are redefining how utility-scale solar farms are inspected and maintained. By enabling continuous, ground-level visibility into panel health and electrical integrity, TerraWise is helping asset owners and operators dramatically improve reliability, reduce downtime, and scale operations in step with the industry’s rapid growth.
TerraWise is introducing the industry’s first physical agentic AI for solar operations and management, moving beyond annual drone flyovers or periodic truck rolls that deliver only intermittent snapshots and reports. The system remains at the plant around the clock, self-charges, and drives the process from perception to diagnosis to action. TerraPV rovers operate as AI assistants to field teams, running full shifts in demanding conditions to capture consistent ground-level thermal and visual data across panels, connectors, cables, combiner boxes, and trackers. Using this data, Photon, TerraWise’s PV-native agent, translates faults into operator terms, prioritizes severity, and automatically creates and routes work orders into existing CMMS platforms. Meanwhile, remote teleoperation enables immediate re-inspections without requiring truck rolls. These combined capabilities deliver continuous, high-fidelity ground truth, empowering even small teams to manage gigawatt-scale farms with greater safety, faster response times, improved efficiency, and higher uptime.
“Being recognized as Start-Up of the Year at RE+ is an incredible honor for our team,” said Dhruva Sankhe, CEO of TerraWise. “Our vision is to make solar field operations as automated, scalable, and resilient as possible. TerraWise rovers are not just inspection tools. They are partners to technicians, helping them do more with less and making it possible to operate gigawatt-scale assets with unprecedented efficiency. This award validates the importance of our mission and strengthens our commitment to supporting the global clean energy transition with technology that is rugged, practical, and built for the future.”
Sankhe represented the company in the pitch competition, which drew more than 40 applicants. TerraWise was one of 10 finalists presenting to a live audience and judging panel that included Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group; Stephanie Annerose, Director of Investment at HASI; and Alexander Carbone, Vice President at Clairvest.
The company received a marketing and communications package from Mercom, valued at $15,000, along with a booth at RE+ 2026, scheduled to return to Las Vegas.
“This year’s Start-Up Live Pitch Competition featured some of the strongest pitches we’ve seen, with several of the companies tackling a wide range of critical clean energy challenges,” said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group. “TerraWise impressed us with a clear vision, practical innovation, and ability to address a major pain point in solar operations. Their approach shows real potential for industry-wide impact, which is why we selected them as the winner.”
Other finalists included the following:
- Bert Thin Films
- ContractPower
- Dili
- Fordje
- Grid8
- Noble Carbon
- REplace
- Rocking Solar
- Wind Pulse Energy
“Congratulations to TerraWise for their victory at the 2025 RE+ Start-Up Live Competition,” said Gary Thuro, Chief Business Officer, RE+ Events. “This competition is always a highlight of RE+, bringing fresh ideas and bold innovators to the stage. Special thanks to Mercom Capital Group for their continued leadership and commitment in making this event such a success each year.”
About Mercom Capital Group
Mercom Capital Group is an integrated communications, research, and media firm focused exclusively on clean energy markets in the U.S., Europe, India, and the Middle East. Our communications division helps clean energy companies build powerful relationships with media, analysts, government decision-makers, local communities, and strategic partners. Our research division produces industry-leading market intelligence reports on solar, storage, smart grid, and hydrogen. Our exclusive quarterly global funding and M&A reports are the industry’s primary source for tracking funding activity in the sector. These reports and trackers are crucial for monitoring market, technology, and sector trends, serving as essential tools for investor targeting. Learn more at: http://www.MercomCapital.com. Sign up for Mercom’s clean energy reports: https://mercomcapital.com/clean-energy-reports/.
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Contacts
Media Contact:
Wendy Prabhu
Mercom Capital Group
Tel: 512-347-0300
E-mail: [email protected]
