The SoLid short baseline reactor neutrino experiment consists in a highly segmented composite scintillator detector with a fiducial mass of 1.6 tons. Its main purpose is to prove or rule out the existence of sterile neutrinos corresponding to $\Delta m^2$ values of order $1\,eV^2$. The covered baseline ranges between 6 and 9 meters and it is in-line with the compact core of the 60 MW BR2 reactor of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre. The experiment will come online in the summer of 2017 and will reconstruct more than 50.000 neutrino events per year, based on the inverse beta decay process. In this proceedings we will review the detector technology and several improvements made to the original design, based on the physics and operational performance of a 320\,kg full-size prototype module that took data at the same site in 2015.