Xpanner has introduced Shake-Out, a GNSS-guided pile distribution application for utility-scale solar projects.
Designed for compact loaders, Shake-Out replaces manual survey marking and pin hunting with real-time, on-screen guidance, allowing crews to place piles accurately without a dedicated marking team.
On solar construction sites, Shake-Out sets the pace for the pile-driving operation. Crews typically rely on survey pins that are slow to locate and often missing, buried in grass, or submerged, forcing new surveys. Operators calculate bundle positions, pile counts and colours by hand, so productivity depends heavily on individual skill. Progress is tracked manually and reported verbally, leaving project offices without visibility until the end of the day.
Shake-Out addresses each of these bottlenecks faced by solar farm contractors.
After a site plan is uploaded to Xpanner Connect and a tablet is mounted to the machine, operators drive straight to GNSS-guided target points using a radar-style guidance lane that provides visual and audio cues as each pile approaches its mark. The system has been field-validated for highly accurate placement, with configurable distance and angle tolerances to meet project-specific requirements.
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“The single largest variable in shake-out has always been operator skill,” said Henri Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Xpanner.
“By turning position-finding, counting and logging into simple on-screen guidance, Shake-Out improves field productivity while providing real-time progress visibility that enables back-office teams to monitor execution, make informed decisions and manage projects more effectively.”
Shake-Out is designed as a brand-agnostic retrofit that installs on any compact track loader or skid steer with quick mounting and simple calibration, so crews can deploy it across mixed equipment fleets without specialized hardware.
The system includes real-time machine navigation, colour-coded pile visualization, one-tap pile counting and bulk shift logging.
Every pile logged in the field syncs instantly to Xpanner Connect, giving project offices live status on piles placed versus plan, progress by block, row and pile type, as well as a clean as-built record, replacing phone calls, spreadsheets, and end-of-day reports with a single live map.
