The solar power industry is growing rapidly. In fact, the market for global solar energy is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5% and reach 223.3 billion USD by 2026.
As a PV system owner, it’s more important than ever to conduct thorough solar farm inspections. Inspections are a form of proactive maintenance that assess the operating health of your solar plant and detect malfunctions. This helps you optimize underperforming solar panels and avoid expensive repairs down the line, saving you time and money in the long run. To stay on top of your solar plant’s maintenance, you should inspect your solar plant 1-2 times per year.
In the past, solar inspections were performed with handheld thermal cameras and I-V tracing technology. However, drones use highly reliable and accurate aerial thermal imaging to inspect PV systems in a fraction of the time. Drone inspections require less capital and involve less risk, all while following all International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) requirements. In this article, we’ll go over what all you stand to gain from using drones in solar inspections.
Table of Contents
What is a Solar Commissioning Inspection?
A solar commissioning inspection is a standard inspection that occurs after a PV plant is installed. It verifies that the installation is complete, safe, and up to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) standards.
The larger the PV system, the more important it is to perform a thorough commissioning inspection before it begins operating. Otherwise, you may end up accepting installation mistakes and equipment defects that are not your fault.
Solar commissioning inspections ensure that all aspects of the PV system are robust and permanent. This includes an assessment of the solar modules’ quality and condition. The inspection also verifies that the PV system performs and operates as designed according to performance benchmarks. Should anything be out of line with OEM standards, the installation team will repair or replace any defective parts.
Now that you know what a solar commissioning inspection is, let’s go over 5 major benefits of using drones to perform solar commissiong inspections:
What's included in YOUR GUIDE...
Techniques for Exposing Warrantiable Items on Your PV Sites.
A Proven Roadmap for Successfully Implementing Drones in Solar.
Strategies for Identifying DC Losses and Avoiding Downtime.
Benefits of Drone PV Commissioning Inspections
1. Warranty Claims
Optimizing PV systems’ energy output is the key to maximizing your return on investment. So it’s important that you check that your solar modules are operating at full capacity from the beginning. If they don’t, you can submit a warranty claim to make sure you get the returns you deserve.
There are two types of PV system warranties: product warranties and performance warranties. Product warranties protect against defects that originated somewhere along the manufacturing process. Performance warranties guarantee a minimum level of output for each year of a solar module’s life. Unfortunately, traditional inspections do not provide precise enough data to satisfy most performance warranty requirements. But with drones, you can easily inspect a number of factors that cause output loss, including hot spots, bypass diode malfunctions, and string anomalies.
By leveraging drone data, you can confirm whether a PV system is operating as designed. If you find it isn’t, you can more easily validate your claim with the warranty company because you have hard evidence. Warranty claims often need to have a very granular level of detail to be accepted. Plus, they need to show that the inspection was performed according to IEC standards. A thermographic drone inspection does both. It provides precise IEC-compliant analysis that helps O&M engineers identify defective solar panels eligible to be repaired under warranty.
2. Better Documentation
Drones allow you to catalog historical data overtime. By keeping a detailed record of a solar plant’s condition and past repairs, you can track broader trends and make sure the site is properly maintained. For example, finding a panel with a few cell defects usually does not warrant a full panel replacement. However, keeping track of these faults is important as they could turn into a large problem over time.
Compiled records can make for a great site portfolio that you can regularly update and refer to. This not only minimizes the amount of risk transferred from one installation or repair to the next but allows you to analyze the data with analytics software to optimize output. After all, information is power.
Drone inspection documentation also helps you stay forward-thinking. It helps prevent future equipment breakdowns, and O&M technicians can use past documentation as a baseline to go by for future inspections.
“Solar panel inspection using AI-powered surveillance drones provides quick and cost-efficient early detection of potential power degradation and safety hazards to minimize operational risk and protect the value of your assets.”
-TÜV Rheinland
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3. Locating Installation Issues
Speaking of equipment issues, drones can detect a lot of solar hardware defects after installation. According to a study by TUV Rheinland, 80% of module defects occur prior to operation. 25% are found during the planning phase, and 5% happen during construction and installation. To catch these costly mistakes, you’ll want a drone to survey the entire site.
Traditional inspections often overlook mistakes because they only inspect a sample size of the PV system. However, drones can detect a large range of solar anomalies. Some anomalies include the following:
- Faulty Modules—Faulty modules reduce the output of your solar plant and can often be a result of a string defect or wiring issue. This makes them hard to identify, but with drones, you can easily test solar cell functionality.
- Cracks—Solar panels expand and contract as they heat and cool. Sometimes this leads to cracks or even micro-fractures on the surface of the solar panel. It’s a common form of cell degradation that should be absent from newly installed solar panels.
- Defective Inverters—80% of PV system downtime, including string and complete outages, result from inverter failures. So it’s imperative to identify and fix any damage to inverters before you accept a PV system installation. Defective inverters on average make up 6.9% of all faults uncovered by infrared aerial inspections.
- String Outages—One of the most important anomalies to locate are defective PV strings. These outages are a major problem at solar farms and makeup 25.9% of anomalies discovered by infrared drone cameras.
- Defective Trackers—Defective trackers make up 31.2% of all PV faults. Solar trackers are special mounts that automatically pivot solar panels in the direction of the sun to keep them efficient year-round. In fact, solar trackers increase output by 20 to 25%.
- Shading—Trees and other obstructions can cast shade over solar panels, reducing the amount of sunlight they absorb. Naturally, this reduces solar panel output. You’d be surprised at how often this occurs. Shading makes up 4.3% of all PV faults.
- Reverse Polarity—Reverse polarity occurs when the electrical current is running backwards due to incorrect wiring. In serious cases, it can damage solar modules and inverters. But with infrared drone cameras, you can easily detect reverse polarity.
4. Time & Cost Savings
The longer it takes to complete a manual inspection, the less time the PV system is generating revenue, so it’s best to perform commissioning inspections as fast as possible. By replacing traditional field walks with drone inspections, you can save time and money by allocating those workers to other high-skilled tasks.
Drone inspections are 10x faster than traditional inspection methods. With aerial views that capture large swaths of solar panels at a time, they can survey a solar farm without the need to mobilize an entire field crew. Plus, drone pilots can program automated flights to make inspections even faster. From our data, drones can cover anywhere between 10-50 MW in a single day (depending on the level of inspection).
Drone inspections are also more cost-effective. Manual inspections require the entire PV system to shut down. And of course, for every second it’s off, you lose out on revenue. However, drones can inspect a PV system while it’s still connected to the electrical grid. That way, there’s no downtime, and you keep generating returns while the inspection takes place.
"Utilizing drones and thermal cameras during solar commissioning inspections is an absolute game-changer. Aerial inspections are fast, thorough, and less costly."
The accuracy of drone inspections saves you money in the long run, too. Drones can detect 99% of anomalies, and they geo-reference positional data, so you can know precisely where the anomalies are located. This way, you can fix issues before they turn into bigger problems. You can even use drone data to develop revenue loss estimations that account for local power rates and climate changes, so you can keep your power output at an optimal level.
If you want to save on hourly rates and hardware and software costs, drones are the way to go. Of course, the total price of a drone inspection will vary. But in the end, you’ll get a better return on your investment with a drone inspection.
5. Customer Satisfaction
Finally, drone solar inspections deliver a superior customer experience. PV system purchasers can rest assured that their solar plant site is operating at its peak efficiency because they have reliable drone data to back it up. Plus, PV system owners don’t have to deal with contractors working on their site for several days or weeks. Pilots are usually on-site for only a few hours or days.
Next Steps: Getting Started with Drone Solar Commissioning Inspections
Utilizing drone technology for solar commissioning inspections results in many long-term benefits. Infrared cameras from an aerial view are faster, cheaper, and more accurate. We definitely recommend using a drone for your next inspection.
When it comes to in-house vs. outsourced drone solar inspections, you’ll want to consider how much you’re willing to invest in drone training, certifications, software, and equipment. Altogether, these initial investments will easily exceed $30,000. We recommend determining whether an in-house drone inspection program leaves you with a positive ROI. If not, consider hiring a professional drone team to do the work for you.
Here at The Drone Life, our drone pilots have years of experience in inspecting PV systems. We can provide visual and thermal imaging with detailed reports to make sure your new solar plant is up to standards and primed for maximum power output. Schedule a free consultation with one of our drone pilots today to get started.
What's included in YOUR GUIDE...
Techniques for Exposing Warrantiable Items on Your PV Sites.
A Proven Roadmap for Successfully Implementing Drones in Solar.
Strategies for Identifying DC Losses and Avoiding Downtime.
