The use of drones in the maintenance of photovoltaic fields

Abstract

Enel Green Power is an Italian company which realises and manages large photovoltaic (PV) plants around the world. The company is involved in a huge number of research projects and one of them involves the use of drones for PV inspection in order to guarantee the correct operation of the plants. In this paper, the use of drones the maintenance of PV plants is analysed from a technical and economic point of view, as function of plant size. First, the use of drones for thermography and visual inspection is briefly described, then, on the basis of on-field activities, the technical specifications of drones and the procedure for the inspection are defined. The results of a thermal infrared analysis performed on six PV plants are analysed. In particular, the failure rates of PV modules are estimated, describing each failure. Finally, an economic analysis is performed in order to evaluate the competitiveness of drones for PV inspection compared to manual maintenance.