Drone Benefits for Solar Panel Inspections

Solar panels are the latest eco-friendly devices that are used by a variety of businesses worldwide to produce clean and green energy directly from the sunlight. As the digital equipment, Solar Panels also need quite a great deal of maintenance and repair from time to time. Often due to high temperature, hot sun glare with full UV signature intends to harm the performance of these solar panel devices, if damaged they can't carry on their function correctly.

That is why the Solar Panels need periodic inspections to have clarity among their functional properties or if there is a need for maintenance or repair for worn out parts of these solar panels.

Doing Solar Inspections, the right way!

There are many ways to make sure that the said device or panel is working to its fullest, such as human inspection, dedicating periodic teams to do the inspection or using Drone technology to do it for you. In this scenario, the drone technology will be a huge help, not only it is cost-effective, subtle but also is the most sophisticated way to get the job done.

Drone cameras don't require the kind of workforce human inspection for these solar panels need, only a single person or at most two people can perform the job and alert the repair or maintenance team if an anomaly arises.

Monitoring the solar panels

Solar panels can be effectively controlled or inspected for potential anomalies using the Photovoltaic (PV) solar panel field inspection. It is a complex system and is available in the physical form to be used by actual humans, but recently the drone or mobile version of this technology has also been introduced. Two main sensors help regarding the inspection of the Solar Panels;

1.     Infrared Cameras

2.     Daylight Cameras

Infrared cameras are used to reveal the heat signatures scattered over various parts of the solar panel or to make sure which particular plate or area of the solar panel is causing the trouble by revealing the heat signature of that specific area. Daylight cameras, on the other hand, are your typical CCTV cameras that take part in the live projection of the Solar Panel over a monitor or TV with a distinctive magnification power to reveal even the tiniest of details.

Both these sensors, on the whole, makes up for the PV systems that are used for the inspection of various solar panels.

Using Drone as your aerial imagery equipment

As described earlier the most viable option here would be to use drone technology that provides aerial imagery support. In relative terms, the drone equipment that is designed explicitly with the PV system for monitoring of the solar panels can serve this purpose.  

There are multiple varieties, makes and models of these drones that are later used for the monitoring of the solar panels. You can find the one that resonates with your needs and then continues with the inspection of the solar panels. The good thing about all this is that anyone can use these drones to look for their particular interests such as businesses in the energy production, private industries and business firms seeking to support themselves with green energy. These drones provide UAV(Unmanned aerial vehicle) support that means you won’t have to be on-board to control the drone, you can only do it sitting behind the control system that controls the device sending radio signals or in advanced modes using the Wi-Fi support and IP tracking.

There comes a slight problem though when dealing with large areas such as the ones where the solar panels extend to several acres; a single drone might not be able to cover these more extensive areas fully. Therefore, here you need a better more revised option and that will be using several of these drones at a single time, and all of them will be interconnected through internet relay.

This is a more sophisticated approach as all the area will be covered in no time and there won't be any flaws in the data whatsoever. On the bright side, you will be able to closely monitor the inspection sitting behind a screen and gather live data from various drone sources scattered throughout the field.

Benefits of using Drones for Panel Inspection

Multiple benefits are associated with the use of particular drones for the inspection of large areas where these solar panels are scattered throughout the field. Some of them might be as follows;

1.   Comprehensive Coverage

One of the most attractive benefits of using these drones for the sake of solar panel inspection is that you get to cover a large area without ever worrying about changing teams on the ground and interrupting with ongoing data accumulation. In the conventional or old methods for inspecting the solar panels manual inspection of these systems preferably via human labor was conducted, this not only left much room for plausible errors but also took forever to complete the project on a given amount of time.

Therefore, the laborers were never able to complete the search area in due time and it added to additional costs and further expenditures from the management side, therefore, using the drones is in the best interest for your business if you need to cover a large area.

2.   Return on Investment (ROI)

You are putting a large sum of money over the mobile unit or human labors that you have dedicated for the inspection and monitoring of the solar panels. All of them needs to be paid, and there are food, travel allowance, and medical insurances, this equation has many variables to cover for. This system will not be a sophisticated one as it will cost you more in terms of investment and very little in terms of return for that investment.

Simple speaking your ROI would be near to nothing at all; therefore there is a need to introduce drone technology in the field, they are a one time investment, and the return on this investment is also huge. Drones are much quicker than human inspecting the solar area, and they can cover a considerable distance as on the flip side of the coin you would have to hire multiple teams to get the very same job done for you. It would have cost too much and also wouldn't be practical at all.

3.   Time-Saving

Using drones to cover the solar field for inspection, gathering resourceful data and monitoring their vitals on the go is a time-saving process. On the other hand, using manual labor is not only time consuming, labor intensive but also leave plenty of room for the errors. Even a negligible error can have a recognizable effect over the performance of a solar panel and that in turn can affect the overall setup.

By implementing the use of aerial videography or aerial footage of the whole solar field the very possibility of errors in terms of the data collection and regulation can be readily eliminated. According to a report that says that implementing the use of drones over the field has reduced the time on site by 90%.

4.   Enhanced Inspectional facility

When you have deployed human labor in the solar panel field you can’t get them to analyze each corner of the area; there will always be anomalies and errors in the provision of data. To avoid this altogether drone systems should have to be used in said solar panel fields, as these systems are more accurate and are sophisticated in terms of procuring each ounce of data from the solar panels. The drones can check for unstable heat signatures, dust accumulating over the surface, any electrical or static disturbance as well.

In straightforward terms the drones can analyze every inch of the field thus making all the information available to the management, they can also categorize the impact OR type of anomaly a particular solar panel is dealing with. This helps to get to the problem right away and do the repairs or effective maintenance of the systems.

5.   Improved operational capacity

With the help of the drone systems inspecting the solar panel fields, the inspection can be escalated ten times faster than the manual teams. This improves the overall operational capacity of the solar panel fields, and the thermal imaging facility also proves to be an astounding help in this regard. With the help of infrared sensing camera, the heat signatures from various parts of the solar panel fields can be monitored effectively, revealing all the anomalies at once and ensuring the immediate processing of the repair and maintenance of the disturbed systems.

These are various benefits of using drone technology instead of focusing over the manual labor to do the trick for you. Drone technology is more effective and sophisticated technology that not only saves you much time, but the costs can also be reduced.