From Teaching in Taiwan to Helping Solar Contractors Grow - Scanifly Spotlight: Daniel Castaño

Scanifly’s employee spotlights showcase our team’s backgrounds, journeys into solar energy, and how they help solar contractors grow their businesses. 

In the smog of Taiwan, Daniel Castaño’s passion for renewable energy became crystal clear. 

He had been teaching English in Taiwan for a year, and initially planned to move there for multiple years. But seeing the environmental damage happening from climate change made him rethink his priorities and dedicate his career to making tangible changes in environmental sustainability.

Returning home to the US, he learned field skills like solar surveying and worked in multiple different roles before joining Scanifly as an in-house drone expert and customer success team member. 

In this Q&A interview, Daniel shared more about his background, his expertise, and his thoughts on the future of solar.

How did you become interested in renewable energy and solar?

For me, it started in college while studying engineering. I went to a lot of job fairs and saw oil companies hiring engineers and I remember thinking that wasn’t the path I wanted for my life. I ended up switching my major to sustainability and sociology so I could learn more about the approaches people take when they want to build a more sustainable world. 

After college, I decided to go abroad to teach English in Taiwan. I was there for 14 months and would have stayed longer, but the smog was so thick that you couldn’t see buildings 20 feet in front of you, and getting frequent nosebleeds from pollution was a fact of life. Noticing the damage climate change had brought to such a beautiful country solidified my career vision to help make an impact on environmental sustainability.

When I moved back to the US, I was ready to get my long-term career up and running and chose renewable energy as my path.

What’s your career in solar been like so far? How did you end up at Scanifly?

I knew I needed more education in the renewable energy world, so I took the PV Associate course through Solar Energy International and got my NABCEP certification.

I also used this career path as a reason to move to Colorado - I love the focus on environmental sustainability combined with fiscal responsibility in the state, so the move made sense for a career in renewable energy.

My first job in solar was as a surveyor and installer position. I stayed at that company for 1.5 years, eventually moving into solar surveying. After that, I joined Namaste Solar where I helped implement a drone program for the surveying team and was part of the team that created surveying standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the company.

After a year and a half at Namaste, I felt I’d picked up a lot of in the field knowledge and was ready to learn the business side. When it came time to make the next step, Scanifly was a great fit and I joined the customer success team.

How do you help Scanifly customers grow with drones?

The thing I like about the Scanifly customer success team is everyone has a specialty but also helps across the board. 

When I can, I like to focus on three different areas: 

1. Drone flying: I help our customers with tips, tricks, and troubleshooting when it comes to drone flights. This is all in service of letting drones do the unsafe work of being up in the air, meaning surveyors can capture accurate data safely from the ground.

2. Flight planning: Beyond piloting a drone, I also help customers develop flight plans (such as point of interest - POI) to most efficiently capture roof data. 

3. Survey process: I help our customers build out SOPs for their drone program to make it safer, more efficient, and more scalable to keep up with the increasing demand for solar.

I like to focus on these areas not just because of my previous job experience but also my personal passion for drone (and RC helicopter) flying. I’ve done around 1,000 drone and RC helicopter flights, both professionally and personally, so creating flight plans and survey processes became a hobby of mine.

What’s your opinion on the future of solar?

I think solar is a very crucial part of a renewable future. However, I don’t think solar will solve all of our energy problems. 

I’m excited to see solar play a big role in building a renewable future. But for this to work, we need more collaboration between solar contractors, oil and gas, and utility companies to remove barriers to renewable energy adoption. We’re all in the same space - delivering energy to people - and we all have to work together to make our world both more sustainable and good for business.