Introduction

The adoption of drones is growing rapidly, and the solar industry is no exception. Drones provide a complete practical solution for the inspection of solar sites, from residential to utility-scale projects. Drones help to avoid hazardous man-hours; reduces costs of regular maintenance, inspections, and repairs; as well as provide accurate data for effective solar PV design. Regardless of whether you are new to the concept or interested in improving your operations, this blog has something for you. After going through, when you are ready to take the next step, be sure to contact Heaven Designs. We’d be more than happy to help!

The Benefits of Drones Today

How Can Drones Make Your Operations Better?

Increase In Efficiency, Save Time…
Last year, Heaven Designs conducted a study to compare the time, costs, and results of its 100% Drone Survey inspections to relevant manual inspection scenarios across some sites.

SITE 1: 100% Drone Survey inspection for maintenance of 74MW site; compared to clamp testing with 20% IV curve tracing testing.
Drone Inspection Time: 20 hrs.
Manual Inspection Time: 426 hrs.
Hazardous Man-hours Avoided: 406 hrs.
Increased Efficiency: 97%

SITE 2: 100% Drone inspection for maintenance of 30MW site; compared to Voc/Isc testing with visual inspection.
Drone Inspection Time: 7 hrs.
Manual Inspection Time: 205 hrs.
Hazardous Man-hours Avoided: 198 hrs.
Increased Efficiency: 98%

SITE 3: 100% Drone inspection for commissioning of 23MW site; compared to 100% hand-held scanning.
Drone Inspection Time: 6 hrs.
Manual Inspection Time: 185 hrs.
Hazardous Man-hours Avoided: 179 hrs.
Increased Efficiency: 97%

SITE 4: 100% Drone inspection for survey of 12.5MW site; compared to 100% trace testing.
Drone Inspection Time: 4 hrs.
Manual Inspection Time: 144 hrs.
Hazardous Man-hours Avoided: 140 hrs.
Increased Efficiency: 98%

Comparison

Comparing the inspection time of drone with manual inspection across the 4 sites, we saw an average increase in inspection efficiency of 97.5%.

More Accurate Data

Saving time and money is good, but when it comes to drones in solar surveys, it’s often the data that makes the story even better.To test the accuracy of Heaven’s Drone Survey data, we took the results of a complete solar survey by drone and sent out manual inspection crews to take on the same inspection on the same solar sites. The result of drone survey out casted the manual survey with 97% accuracy and took 32 hours less than the manual inspection.

Easy To Use

Following processing and analysis, Heaven Designs delivers drone data to clients in a user-friendly format. Reading and absorbing the information is surprisingly easy. The reports are pretty integrated, delivered in PDF or snapshot format with 3D rendered solar design as well as structure design images. Data can even be delivered through our smart phone app (Solar Design Solution), which also provides solar contractors and customers to manage and execute their solar projects from anywhere, anytime.

Use Cases For Drones In Solar

Roof Measurements & Inspections

Getting up on a roof for measurement is a dangerous task to carry, and drones can help survey crew to avoid it. Drones can be used to capture detailed images of roofs and to identify possible obstructions for solar system design and planning. They can also be used to effectively inspect existing systems to find defects or check conditions caused by nature.

Site Development Planning & Construction

During solar surveys, drones collect data for topographic modelling, shading analysis, generator proximity, obstructions analysis to understand how optimized a site is for the maximum power generation.

Maintenance Inspections

For solar plants, an annual inspection is a must and proves to be one of the most valuable uses for drones. As discussed in the previous section, drones can complete 100% inspections in a blink than manual inspections.This helps in avoiding hazardous man-hours and provides adequate data. Detailed stats on modules failure at the string, module, or at the sub-module level can be delivered to a smart phone application for easy use.

Above All- No Operational Shutdown Required

The most valuable thing the drone does is that it allows us to inspect solar sites without having to shut down the on-going daily operations. This saves man-hours loss of shut down, improves turnaround time by several days, and eliminates paperworkupto the maximum extent.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have provided the benefits and use cases of drones in various solar operations.
Whether you are looking to commence an internal drone program or outsource operations, Heaven Designs can help in both ways. Heaven Designs offers a range of product assistance, solar design, and engineering services for companies such as solar contactors or investors, O&M service providers, and EPC firms.

Register On Our Online Design Portal:

To grow your solar business effectively, we have developed online portal, where you can create, monitor & track your design project any time.

Follow These Simple Steps-
-Site visit form included and mobile-friendly portal
-Track each project design on the dashboard
-You can also add your team and provide them the user ID and password
-Upload site visit data or project name
-Download complete design in one go- https://app.heavendesigns.in

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