The photovoltaic industry is growing faster than any other renewable energy field to the point of forecasting the PV capacity around 800GW (approximately 4500 modules constitute 1 MW of installed PV capacity) for the 2019-2024 time span.
The management of this large number of panels poses a number of inspection and monitoring challenges to asset owners. O&M costs are estimated to be between 1% and 5% of total PV plant expenditure during its useful life.
Actual yield and uninterrupted operation of the PV plant are entirely dependent on the prompts and proper detection, assessment, and correction of the various faults that may occur. As such, maintenance strategies require a balance between preventive inspection costs and risk of plant shutdown due to defects.
Precautionary maintenance includes routine inspection and servicing of equipment to prevent malfunctions and unnecessary production loss. Generally, solar plant developers enter a power purchase agreement with host customers to sell power generated at a fix rate and at a pre-determined generation capacity. It is imperative for solar farms to maintain an optimal level of performance and take action on faulty modules that may be affected by anomalies, thus lower the energy output.
In this scenario, RINA today revealed the results of a new partnership with Wesii, an innovative Italian start-up that operates aerial thermography within the renewable energy sector, mainly the photovoltaic industry. The two companies have been working together to combine the efficiencies of our expertise and the Wesii’s state-of-the-art aerial thermography solutions.
Wesii serves the Photovoltaic industry needs for more digitalization by using a rigorous aerial thermography process and providing the best qualitative information of a PV plant in order to maximize its energy production. With the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) approach, automated procedures and development of complex algorithms it is possible to survey a significant amount of MW, digitalize the plant, deliver a highly accurate report on discovered anomalies, and cut on both time and money expenses. The technical solution involves the use of drones, equipped with innovative high definition thermal infrared and visual cameras for the thermographic analysis of the modules.
Mauro Migliazzi, Founder & CEO of Wesii commented:
“We normally use rigorous thermal and visual imaging inspection work, digitalize the plant and identify anomalies via our cutting edge technology for machine learning to provide a great valuable tool for the RINA service to their client worldwide."
Moreover, Wesii offers the geolocation of defective panels, classification of the possible faults, complete collection of images and information - all stored on Elios, their own web platform. One of the flagship features is definitely the Multitemporal Tool which allows to compare annual surveys of the asset and keep its efficiency under constant control.