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Benefits of Drone Technology for Solar Inspections

Drones are becoming increasingly popular for solar inspections due to their efficiency and ability to cover large areas quickly.

In the past, inspectors would have to test each string of solar modules individually for damage or defects. This process was time-consuming and often resulted in missed strings, or decisions to only inspect a fraction of the PV system to gather a sample size .

The ability for a drone to quickly access any site location has enabled PV inspectors to cover a much larger area in a shorter amount of time, ensuring that all panels are checked. Instead of sending a team of technicians to find a needle in a haystack, one technician can show up to a site and perform an infrared and high-resolution imaging inspection within a few hours. This saves time and resources while still providing an accurate assessment of the situation.5

One of the major obstacles to traditional solar inspections was efficiency at scale. To scale traditional solar inspections, called I-V Curve Tracing, you would need a continuous number of qualified technicians to be able to meet client demand. Technicians must perform inspections, analyze data, interpret results, and then generate reports per-string. The collection time is very lengthy, lasting 2-5 hours per MW. Ultimately, you reach a point where it doesn’t make financial sense to continue adding labor for larger and larger solar installations.

Efficiency at Scale

Drone technology has revolutionized this process through efficiencies of scale. Drones are fast and they can cover a lot of ground quickly. This means you can get the information you need to make decisions about your solar array faster and more effectively. Aerial thermography inspections cover on average 10 minutes per MW compared to the 2-5 hours per MW for I-V Curve Tracing. This means you can achieve actionable data within days, not weeks, and you can do all this without adding additional technicians or personnel.

In addition to overcoming the efficiency of scale obstacles, a PIC/ VO team can work together with other drone crews to meet even higher demands. This means larger solar farms can be inspected with multiple crews working simultaneously through a coordinated series of flights. This can reduce the collection times even further, speeding up the process even more, while at the same time increasing the overall size of the farm that can be inspected

Improvements for Worker Safety

Solar inspections can be dangerous for workers, as they often require climbing onto roofs or traversing into different degrees of terrain. Depending on the activities undertaken by the inspection technicians, risks may include.

Electrocution
Arc-flash and electric shocks
Mechanical hazards (e.g., contact with moving parts)
Leg injuries
Being trapped between or in equipment
Heat stress
Falls from heights (ladders, structures)
Exposure to chemicals, fire, toxic fumes, or explosion
Snake bites

Superior Historical Data

Drones provide a unique perspective that can be used to track the degradation of solar installations over time. Since solar panels are constantly exposed to the elements, historical data can become extremely important. Data collected from multiple inspections over time can be used to compare even small changes to the overall system. Some of which may not warrant a full replacement or diagnostic, but this data is useful to ensure all present anomalies throughout the system do not turn into larger problems. Additionally, this data can be used to improve the accuracy of predictive maintenance models, a growing field with many O&M companies.

The use of the newest AI maintenance models is dependent on large historical datasets like the ones drones can provide. This use case is growing so rapidly that the lack of a predictive component in the maintenance strategy is now a hindrance to minimizing downtime costs.8 Using historical datasets to track the location of faults over time will continue to improve these preventative maintenance schedules reducing downtime and associated costs. Since drones can collect large amounts of data very quickly, they excel in collecting data points that would otherwise be inaccessible in a manual operation. All this provides a far superior historical dataset for the client

No Plant Downtime Required

Finally, solar inspections conducted with drones do not require plant downtime. Traditional inspections of large solar farms can be extremely time-consuming, and often require the plant to be shut down for safety reasons. This can result in significant financial losses for the plant owners. This is a major advantage drones have over traditional inspection methods. Drones can be operated during normal plant operations, which helps to reduce downtime and improves overall productivity

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