DJI drones are benefiting solar panel inspections, boosting safety and ROI. A UAV with thermal and RGB cameras can collect data 50x faster than hand-held methods.
The Future of Solar Panel Inspection
- Drones are a powerful tool for solar panel inspections, collecting data more than 50x faster than manual methods.
- Solar panel installations have grown massively – up by 81% in 2019, compared to 2018. More installations mean more inspections.
- Harnessing the DJI ecosystem, the M300 RTK and H20T payload is a great solution, offering expanded flight time and thermal, zoom and wide-angle capabilities.
- The DJI M30T is also a suitable option, with its mix of power and portability.
- “Drones increase data quantity and quality and reduce costs and hazardous man-hours,” says DJI.
Drones have become a vital tool for solar panel inspections, collecting data more than 50x faster than manual methods and improving safety by avoiding hazardous man-hours.
And the emergence of UAVs as the go-to tool for this type of work looks set to accelerate, as the trend towards adopting renewable energy is expected to grow massively in the coming years.
This combination offers long flight times, smart features to streamline and automate inspections, and thermal, zoom, and wide-angle capabilities – helping to increase daily productivity.
The M300 RTK has substantially improved fieldwork with its new functionalities. It has allowed us to increase daily productivity on the configuration of the plant, reaching up to 40 MWp per day of fieldwork.Ignacio Bullon, CEO of solar panel inspection company Exanter
The benefits of using drones for solar panel inspections were explained during a webinar hosted by Eduardo Rodriguez, Enterprise Product Manager for DJI Europe.
He said: “Drones featuring thermal imaging payloads allow operators to perform a full solar farm operation in a matter of hours, compared to days using manual methods. They increase data quantity and quality and reduce costs.”
A Look At The Market
Worldwide growth of photovoltaics (also known as solar PV) has been close to exponential between 1992 and 2018. During this period of time, photovoltaics (PV) has evolved from a niche market of small scale applications to a mainstream electricity source.
And this trend is not slowing down. In fact, an 81% growth is expected in 2019 across the 28 EU countries, jumping from 11.3 GW (gigawatt) installed in 2018 to 20.4 GW in 2019.
And with these countries having until 2020 to meet their binding national renewable targets, it is predicted that there will be a large investment in the PV market and, as such, the number of installations will continue to climb.
By 2023, for instance, Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands and Italy will generate more than 75% of all European photovoltaic energy, according to statistics provided during the DJI webinar.
A photovoltaic system employs solar modules, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop mounted, wall-mounted or floating. The mount may be fixed, or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky.
And guess what, all of these components need to be inspected for maintenance and to ensure your operations are running smoothly.
This is where drones for inspections come in.
Drones Versus Manual Methods
Solar panel inspections are already happening, but the vast majority are still performed manually, using hand-held thermal cameras.
A thermal camera can help identify manufacturing defects, cracks, faulty inter-connectors, defective bypass diodes and temporary shadowing.
Hand-held and manual inspections are fine, but this process is not as efficient as it could be. Fly forward the drone – which yields faster and more accurate data capture and helps to improve safety.
In a nutshell, here are some of the ways that drones are a superior inspection method compared to traditional/handheld techniques:
- Increase efficiency: Drones collect data more than 50x faster than manual methods. Solar farms are typically very large installations, so a drone equipped with an appropriate thermal camera can scan the site for defects much faster than using a thermal camera on the ground.
- Get better quantity & quality information: Efficiently identify issues manual processes might miss.
- Avoid hazardous man-hours: Conduct surveys and inspections without being exposed to potential danger.
- Reduce costs: Not only in inspection, but maintenance, equipment and potential shut downs.
- Store, track & distribute data: Manage data with a secure portal and convenient reporting.
When it comes to increasing efficiency and enhancing data capture, drones have major advantages. For instance, thanks to the sophisticated payloads they can carry, drones let solar panel inspectors obtain both thermal and RGB (visible light) data.
And while thermal imaging is crucial for solar panel inspections, RGB is essential to give a complete picture of what is happening on your site.
During the webinar, Eduardo said: “With the use of drones, apart from increased efficiency and reduced costs, we can capture both thermal and RGB data and this is really, really relevant.
“By carrying out only thermal inspections, this could potentially lead to a false positive, which means we could misidentify non-electrical issues like soiling, shading or animal nesting, and you could be misled to thinking that these are electrical problems when they actually are not.”
He added: “Thermal and RGB data sets are also important when it comes to quantitative and qualitative analysis – both essential to understanding defects on solar panels.
“In terms of quantitative analysis, this refers to temperature data from every pixel on the thermal sensor. This is known as radiometric data, and this can be used to evaluate the impact of the defect.
“This is completely different from qualitative analysis. This refers to the data captured by the RGB sensor, as well as the post-analysed thermal data. It tells us which type of problem you have. It won’t tell the impact of the problem – we get that from quantitative analysis – but it will tell us if there’s an electrical problem or more of a shading/soiling problem.”
Increasing efficiency is crucial when it comes to inspecting solar panels. With weather conditions having to be almost perfect – dry, clear, little-to-no wind and the panels reaching a certain level of irradiance – there are often only a few hours in the day when checks/maintenance can be carried out. Therefore, a drone lets you capture this data quickly.