Copper theft on a West Texas jobsite follows a pattern. The site sits open, wire and tools stack up after a delivery, and somebody comes through after dark. By the time the super shows up at 6 in the morning, the spools are gone and the schedule slips.
The obvious answer is cameras. The problem is that most jobsites do not have permanent power or an internet circuit until well into the build, so a PoE camera on a switch in a closet is not an option yet. That leaves solar with battery storage for power and cellular for connectivity, which is a different design problem than a building install.
Sizing solar for a site that has to work in January
West Texas sun is a real advantage, and it also leads people to undersize the system. The panel does not have to carry a July afternoon. It has to carry the worst week of the year.
Winter is the design case. Days are short, the sun sits low, and overcast can run several days in a row. A system sized off average annual sun can run fine for most of the year and then drop offline in December, when long nights make theft easier. Battery capacity has to cover several low-production days in a row, not one night.
Two other things push the load higher than people expect. Cellular modems draw more power when signal is weak, because they transmit harder to reach a distant tower. Cameras with heaters and IR illuminators draw noticeably more at night and in cold weather. A load calculation that only counts the camera's idle draw will come up short.
Past a point, panel angle matters more than panel size. A steeper tilt on a south-facing mount favors the winter months that limit the design. Dust is the other factor. Panels out here film over between rains, and output drops with the coating. Somebody has to wipe them, or the system needs enough margin that nobody has to.
Cellular, retention, and what you are paying for
A cellular camera system sends video over a carrier data plan. That plan is finite, and continuous high-resolution upload will use it up fast. Practical designs record locally at full quality and upload selectively: event clips, thumbnails, and live view on demand.
That local recording is your evidence. If the unit stores footage on an SD card or internal drive and only pushes clips on motion, your retention is whatever local storage holds, and your cloud copy is whatever got uploaded. Know both numbers before an incident, not after.
Check carrier coverage at the actual site before ordering anything. A site on a county road well outside Midland can sit in a weak spot, and an external antenna or a different carrier can be the difference between a working system and a unit that burns battery hunting for signal.
Cutting false alerts so people still read them
Motion alerts on an open West Texas site will fire on tumbleweeds, blowing dust, jackrabbits, shadows, and headlights on the county road. A system that sends dozens of alerts a night gets muted within a week, and then it is just an expensive recorder.
Analytics that classify people and vehicles, rather than raw pixel change, cut most of that. Drawing detection zones tightly around the gate, the laydown yard, and the conex instead of the whole frame cuts more. Scheduling helps too. Alerts that only run outside working hours keep your own crew from setting them off all day.
Alerts should also go somewhere with a plan behind them. A clip on the super's phone at 2 in the morning only helps if somebody has agreed in advance who calls the sheriff and who drives out.
Making the footage hold up for a claim
Footage that proves something needs more than motion in the frame. An insurance adjuster or a sheriff's investigator wants to identify people, plates, and equipment, and that comes down to how much detail lands on the target at the distance you mounted for. A camera covering a wide yard from a tall pole will show that a truck came through the gate. It will not read the plate. Those are two different camera placements, and sites that need both usually need both cameras.
The other half is having the video when you ask for it. If the incident was 3 weeks ago and local storage overwrote at 10 days, there is nothing to export. Set retention against how long it realistically takes to notice a loss, which on a big site can be a while.
Export format matters too. Video that only plays in a proprietary viewer creates friction with an adjuster or a police department, and so does a camera clock that has drifted.
Who we are
West Texas Wi-Fi & Networking is a veteran-owned contractor in Lubbock. We design and install commercial Wi-Fi, cameras, access control, and cabling across West Texas, and we hold a Texas Department of Public Safety security license (B31108601) for the camera and access control work. If you want a second set of eyes on your building, book a free site survey or call (806) 370-9434.