Discover how Doral Renewables streamlined project oversight and accelerated solar development nationwide with smarter portfolio management.
Doral Renewables is a leading utility scale solar and energy storage developer headquartered in Philadelphia. After experiencing rapid pipeline growth, they needed to scale their project oversight and decision-making processes to keep pace. We caught up with Brennan Downes, senior vice president and project leader, to better understand Doral’s project management challenges, their IT initiative to address these challenges, and business results achieved to date.
The Problem
Lack of visibility to the project pipeline
Doral has a 17-gigawatt portfolio with more than $2.5 billion in signed power purchase agreements and $1.6 billion in equity and financing raised. The flagship project, Mammoth Solar, will generate enough electricity to power 250,000 homes and is now the largest solar project in the western hemisphere. It required the Doral team to work with 60 landowners across 13,000 acres, juggle numerous permits, and keep several power buyers informed.
By the time Doral engaged with Planisware, the project pipeline consisted of 50 solar projects in 22 states, and 7 electricity markets, and the entire pipeline was tracked on spreadsheets. Further, workflows were built around spreadsheets, timelines, and email threads that couldn’t keep up with the company’s rapid growth and quarterly reporting needs. This led to slow decision-making and bogged the whole team down with non-value-add work like chasing updates.
“I had a 40-tab budget file for each project and 75 separate trackers, Brennan said. “It was a heavy lift for the team and made everything harder than it needed to be. Now I can see the full pipeline, decide faster, and free myself and my team from busy work.”
The Solution
Planisware Orchestra brings process discipline and data visibility
Planisware Orchestra is now the single version of truth and system of record for the Doral project pipeline from end to end. A central dashboard gives the team a complete view of their portfolio from early prospects to active builds and operating sites. Filters by region, stage, or megawatts make it easy to focus, prioritize, and act with clarity. Brennan especially appreciates that budgets and schedules are linked. When a date shifts, the cost plan updates automatically. He added that project meetings now start with real-time data, not outdated slide decks and that groups from legal to engineering start with the same view making collaboration smoother and decisions faster.
"When we doubled our development pipeline, quarterly reporting became a full-time job,” said Brennan. “I thought I would need to build a custom system in Power BI just to survive. Instead, we rolled out Planisware Orchestra.”
The Outcome
Doral is positioned to grow and scale with confidence
According to Brennan, Doral will save hundreds, if not thousands of hours this year from productivity gains relating to budgeting and coordination alone. He also believes the company is better positioned to avoid short project delays that can cost millions with smarter portfolio management that enables better alignment, faster and more agile execution, lower risk, and more confident decision making.
The next step for the initiative is to roll out Kanban-style boards to follow each workflow and make it easier to see where things stand and who is responsible. One board covers interconnection tasks. Another follows readiness-to-build steps. Others track contracts and legal progress.
"My vision is to have everything tied to development - milestones, risks, budget, contracts, and comments all in one place, Planisware is the backbone that makes that vision possible," concluded Brennan.
Doral Renewables – Fast Facts
- Overview
- U.S. HQ: Philadelphia; Israeli HQ: Ramat Gan
- Publicly traded (DORL – Tel Aviv Stock Exchange)
- Project Scale & Geographic Reach
- 17 GW solar + 5 GWh storage pipeline
- ~400 MW operating, ~900 MW under construction
- Active in 20+ U.S. states and 7 energy markets
- Technology Focus
- Solar PV, storage, biogas, and agrivoltaics
- Launched Doral Tech to support cleantech innovation
- Financial Strength
- Over $2.5B in PPAs signed; $1B+ in financing raised
- 2023 revenue projected: NIS 165M (up ~50% in 2 years)
