A solar panel inspection drone is used to conduct inspections looking for damage, dirt or any anomalies. How does this work?

Solar panels can be inspected by a drone fitted with a thermal imaging camera.

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Solar panel inspection drone

The solar panel inspection drone makes the inspection easy as it simply needs to fly over the solar farm or your roof. This can be done manually or autonomously – you only need to draw an area on your screen and you can let the inspection drone do the rest.

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Thermal imaging camera

Using the thermal imaging camera you can carry out the inspection properly as it shows you exactly which solar cell is broken. You can see this on the thermal image because a broken solar cell gets a lot warmer than a solar cell that is still in good condition, so a broken solar cell will light up much brighter.

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Why use a solar panel inspection drone to conduct inspections?

If you use a solar panel inspection drone to inspect solar panels then the inspection will be:

1. Faster
2. Cheaper
3. More effective

It’s faster because you no longer need to walk on foot across the entire solar park – you can just let the drone fly over it.

It is cheaper because the drone is faster and therefore saves you hours of staff payments.

It is more effective because you can see more with the drone, and also check more often because the data is stored, and you can look at it again later.

It can be even more effective when used with machine learning software. This software allows the drone to learn and recognize damage independently. This has to be built up over time, but the recognition will become increasingly better.

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