It is no wonder why Drones are quickly replacing the need for physical human inspections of solar farms by reducing the time from days/weeks to hours.
Vice president of energy infrastructure at Measure, Harjeet Johal, told Renewable Energy World that the use of Drones for solar maintenance solutions provide 5 distinct advantages.
1) Integration
Asset Managers on solar farm projects typically work in a back office. Using a drone to relay footage to a server allows Asset Managers the ability to integrate their work day with maintenance procedures. A single snap shot of drone footage can be available direct to managers to assess where faults and abnormalities exist.
2) Efficiency
Drones can cut solar farm inspection from days to hours, months to days, and years to weeks.
3) Safety
Drones limit the need for human inspections which eliminate the potential hazards involved in solar farm inspections.
4) Productivity
Johal said “It takes a long time for manual plant inspections, we’ve seen that sometimes it can take many months, or many years, to complete one full inspection.” With the use of Drones, month to years is reduced to days and weeks.
“Since drones can capture data in a single visit, typically we won’t leave any opportunity of missed revenues on the table,” he said.
5) Accuracy
“That tells asset managers what the percent degradation is and helps them make important economic decisions,” Johal said. “Since we’re able to go down to the cell level in one single shot, it gives a more accurate representation of the overall health of the farm.”