The energy sector is highly complex and capital-intensive. Not only do energy companies and utilities require significant infrastructure investment, their smooth functioning mandates efficient asset integrity management.

Manual data collection methods are dangerous, costly, time intensive, and often require the assets to be taken offline in order to carry out the inspection, causing major losses in productivity.

Asset inspection costs the global solar farm asset maintenance $1 billion annually in labor alone.

But this doesn’t have to be so. Commercial drones have an incredible potential to transform the way companies manage their industrial assets.

The sheer size of large, modern solar farms mean that traditional manual inspections are extremely time-consuming and expensive. Even after deploying an army of workers at a tremendous cost, only about 2-3 percent of a plant can be analyzed, which results in highly inaccurate performance reports.

DJI drones equipped with visual and thermal imaging cameras enable operators to cost-effectively identify both non-electrical issues, such as soiling, shading, or animal nesting, as well as electrical problems like defective cells.

At a recent drone solar inspection, a team of two was able to inspect sites covering a combined area of 10 sq km within 10 days – something that would have been impossible to achieve on foot.

Using AI software, specifically designed for PV plant inspection, identifies almost any profitability-reducing anomalies across the sites, with issues ranging from broken solar panels and defects in bypass diodes to solar cell malfunction and accumulation of dirt on the panels.

Detailed report, including coordinates, pictures and severity grade diagnosis, will be sent to maintenance teams, who can now repair or clean the faulty units and keep the solar farms running at peak capacity.

DJI Dock offers a complete autonomous solution for drone inspections. Being able to take-of on a scheduled program, DJI Matrice 30T can inspect PV site automatically. Real time images will be sent to AI software for failure analysis, providing real time detection to the control room. Once mission has been completed, the drone will land in the Dock and recharge itself, being ready for the next flight.

Drone solutions ensure 90% saving in inspection manpower costs, providing no-stop 24/7 service, boosting PV infrastructure performances and revenues up to 16%.

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INSPECTIONS AND FAILURE DETECTION

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THE PROBLEM:

Solar panles require regular inspections for damage and dirt – a time-consuming, costly, and even potentially hazardous task when you are trying to scale up.

BEFORE DRONES:

Inspections were carried out by teams of workers, diverting manpower and increasing costs. As few as 2-3% of panels were being inspected at many large plants.

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THE SOLUTION:

Enter Drone Visual. The Brazilian tech company, using DJI Matrice Series drones, take visual and thermal images of solar panels from the air.

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Visual images make it easy to spot issues like excess dirt, shade or animal nests.

Thermal images can find areas where panels are not operating at full capacity.

THE RESULTS:

With a solar inspection drone, just to staff were able to inspect a 10 km2 area within 13 days, identifying 6,000 anomalies across the three solar plants – all while mitigating risks.

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WORKFLOW

AUTONOMOUS OPERATION

Comparable Data Scheduled assessment.
Faster operation.
Reduce workload,

DRONE DIAGNOSIS SYSTEM

Based on AI algorithms, the system identifies fault image and support route planning, fault diagnosis, fault location, data reporting, and mobile navigation, assisting client staff for efficient troubleshooting.

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Autonomous Flight (Mission)

Being able to take off and land autonomously from the DJI Dock, the drone can autonomously conduct programmed missions, managing route, autonomy and data analysis

Environmental Control (DJI Dock)

Thanks to a dedicated meteorological station, the system can evaluate the environmental conditions in real time and act promptly in case of imminent adversity, to ensure the safety of operations

Omnidirectional Obstacle Avoidance System

Autonomous detection and obstacles avoidance, preventing crashes and dameges for structures and wokers

RTK Positioning System

Thanks to RTK Precision Coordinate System, geo-data during surveys reaches centimetric precision and high resolution geographic data

High Resolution Thermal Camera

640 × 512 resolution and temperature measurement, high temperature alerts, color palettes, and isotherms

High Resolution Zoom Camera

42MP sensor up to 156× Max Hybrid Zoom to see essential details. Complete mapping missions with extraordinary efficiency

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Complete autonomous operation

Operator can plan flight rout on any structure, indipendently on form or geometry. Complete autonomous flight, taking high resolution pictures, creating ready-to-use reports