Solar Panel Inspection Using Drones

Further drones and the sophisticated software that powers them are transforming operations and management practices for commercial solar companies.

Solar panel inspection using drones.

Pricing solar farm inspections drone service providers think in terms of acres but solar asset managers pay for services by the megawatt mw. Drones are bringing airborne analytics to utility scale solar operations like pv equipment inspections resulting in strong time and cost savings. Keep the solar farm running at peak efficiency. In addition using drone technology to inspect and do maintenance to solar panels is a great way of.

The same 250 hectares can be covered by drones well within 2 days. Inspecting solar farms using drones is not a simple flight task. Real life applications for solar panel inspection drones many industries are beginning to use drones to dramatically improve their workload. Hot spot identification showing defective cells geotagged image.

The process involves detailed planning and a thorough understanding of the area to be inspected. Doing high quality maintenance the trained professional drones inspectors are. There are multiple steps required to conduct a successful inspection. A drone mounted with a thermal camera can fly over pre planned routes covering one section of the solar farm at a time and capturing thermal images along with geospatial metadata.

Drones are a powerful tool for solar panel inspections collecting data more than 50x faster than manual methods. Drones are more efficient cost effective and safer for solar panel installations and inspections. More installations mean more inspections. First the inspection team needs to confirm the dimensions of the solar farm before they can prepare an effective plan.

Options for plant inspections. Save time with pre selected way point aerial inspections. Saving time the system convenience and ease of use help the owners of solar panels to save time in maintenance. Diagnostic purpose planning of panel placement.

Infrared signatures show defective panels. Solar panel installations have grown massively up by 81 in 2019 compared to 2018. Value of drones for solar farm inspections. Older solar installations typically require 7 9 acres mw while newer installations only need 5 acres mw.

In order to inspect a large surface area like this solar field a drone needs to be highly reliable and be able to fly relatively long periods of time without stopping or running out of battery. Using infrared drone technology to inspect solar panels and wind turbines an east coast industrial plant had for months experienced a significant dropoff in energy production from its. Rapid and easy scans for roof tops and arrays.