A recent trial at our Onslow Power Station solar farm, using drone technology to capture infrared and high-resolution imagery, successfully identified solar panels with defects.
Steve Lilliss, Senior Manager Asset Management in the Operations Division, was on site while the technology was tested.
“There are some key benefits to using drones and infrared technology,” Steve said.
“At the moment, we conduct solar farm inspections in person on the ground. This is time consuming – for example the Onslow solar farm, which is about 1MW in size with 3,022 panels, takes up to two days with two people to perform visual inspections that only identify obvious damage and do not detect deterioration in performance, for example hot or cold spots. Additionally, our crew can only view from the ground.”
“This reinforces that natural washing is effective in Onslow, as we’ve not undertaken any specific washing since it was commissioned. And as we had spare panels onsite, repairs were undertaken in situ.”
“At the moment, we’re using Sensorem for this work,” Steve explained. “But ideally, we’ll be able to train some of our crew up with commercial drone licences and bring inspections in-house in the near future.”
