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%.