Use HelioTest from Claude

The HelioTest connector lets your own Claude work on your PV performance tests. From a conversation, Claude can set up sites and test runs, import measured data, run a test, and read and investigate the result. Every change asks for your approval first.

Results, verdicts and quality checks are always computed by HelioTest. Claude reads them, explains them and helps you find out why a result is what it is.

What you need

  • A HelioTest account. The connector is included in every plan, and a free account is enough to start.
  • A Claude account, on the web, in the Claude desktop app or in Claude Code.

Connect HelioTest to Claude

  1. In Claude, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, or use the button below, which opens that form with HelioTest filled in.
  2. Enter the name HelioTest and the connector address https://api.heliotest.com/mcp
  3. Claude sends you to HelioTest. Sign in, pick the organization Claude may work in, and approve the connection.

Add HelioTest to Claude

In Claude Code, add the connector from a terminal and sign in when asked: claude mcp add --transport http heliotest https://api.heliotest.com/mcp

A connection works in one organization, with the permissions your role has there. A member with the viewer role can read through the connector and cannot change anything.

What Claude can do

Sites and PV systems

Reads: The sites of your organization and the PV systems on each one.

Changes, with your approval: Create a site or a PV system, and update their details.

Test runs and their configuration

Reads: The test runs of a PV system, the configuration of a run, and what a run still needs before it can be executed.

Changes, with your approval: Create or duplicate a test run, change its configuration, record capacity events, and write the remarks that appear in the report.

Measured and modeled data

Reads: The data files of a run with their columns, units and time range, the monitoring connection of a site and the data streams it offers.

Changes, with your approval: Import measured data from the site's monitoring connection, set the units of a file, set or remove a model power you provide, and remove a data file from a run.

Execution and results

Reads: The result and its verdict, the quality checks, the filtering steps with the points each one removed, and charts of the result.

Changes, with your approval: Execute a test run.

Investigation

Reads: Re-run a test with changed settings, or sweep one setting across a range, to see how the result responds. These runs are computed for the conversation only: nothing that is saved changes.

The connector covers capacity tests in full. Availability test runs can be created, listed, executed and remarked on, and Claude can read a summary of their result. Their configuration, events and detailed results are handled in HelioTest.

Every change asks first

Reading is free. Anything that changes data is shown to you in the conversation for approval before it happens: creating a site or a test run, editing a configuration, importing data, removing a file, executing a test. Changes made through the connector are recorded in your organization's audit log, like changes made in HelioTest itself.

What stays in HelioTest

  • Uploading measured and modeled data files. Claude gives you a link to the right page and carries on once the file is there.
  • Downloading the PDF report and the export package. Claude gives you the link.
  • Connecting a monitoring platform. Its credentials are entered in HelioTest and are never shown to Claude.
  • Renaming a test run, and archiving or deleting anything.
  • Billing, members and invitations.

Plans

The connector follows the same plan rules as the app. On a free account Claude can set up a site, work with the files you upload, execute test runs and read their results, within the free plan's limits. Downloading the report and the export package, and importing data from a monitoring platform, need a paid plan. See pricing.

Things to ask

  • “List my HelioTest sites and tell me which test runs have not been executed yet.”
  • “Set up a capacity test for the PV system at my Ridgeview site, covering June 1 to June 7, and tell me which files I still need to upload.”
  • “The latest capacity test on Ridgeview failed. Walk me through the filtering steps and the quality checks, and tell me what most likely explains the result.”
  • “How much does the result change if the irradiance filter is tightened? Show me a chart.”

In HelioTest, the Open in assistant button on a PV system gives you a short brief for a Claude Project. With the contract's test clause, the PVsyst report and the sensor list added to that Project, Claude knows what the test must show before it starts.

Your data

  • Claude receives what a tool returns in answer to a request in your conversation: site and PV system details, test configurations, descriptions of data files, results, quality checks and charts.
  • Data files are not uploaded through Claude, and monitoring platform credentials are never shown to it.
  • The connector does not read your conversations, and HelioTest does not send your data to an AI model.
  • Claude is operated by Anthropic under its own terms and privacy policy, which govern what it does with what it receives. Ours are the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service.

Disconnecting

In HelioTest, open My Account → Connected assistants and revoke the connection. It stops working at once. You can also remove the connector in Claude's settings.

Troubleshooting

Claude asks for approval before every read.
Reading never changes anything, so it is safe to choose "Always allow" for the read tools when Claude asks, or to set it under the connector's tool permissions in Claude.
A tool answers that a paid plan is needed.
Report downloads and imports from a monitoring platform follow your plan, exactly as in the app. The answer names the page in HelioTest where you can upgrade.
Claude works in the wrong organization.
A connection works in the one organization you picked when you approved it. Disconnect it under My Account in HelioTest, connect again and pick the other organization.
The sandbox demo cannot be connected.
The connector needs a HelioTest account. A free account is enough.

Support

Questions about the connector, or something it should do and does not: write to peter@alpengridanalytics.com.