Solar plant inspection approaches
Comparison of inspection approaches
Solar plant inspection takes three approaches: an autonomous platform, a processing service and SCADA monitoring. The comparison below shows which need each approach addresses.
Three approaches, seven criteria
No brand names are used in the table. The other two columns describe the general characteristics of each approach, independent of any particular provider.
| Criterion | Autonomous platform (SolarDetech) | Processing service | SCADA monitoring |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panel coverage | 100%. Every panel in the plant is imaged, measured with the thermal camera and recorded under its persistent identity. Each panel is seen in a median of 15 separate thermal frames. A flight that fails the coverage check is not processed. | Varies with the flight plan and the delivery format. | No measurement is made at panel level. Monitoring takes place at string and inverter level. |
| Processing time | Processing is automatic and takes about 12 hours for a 10 MW plant. The report is delivered within at most 5 business days of the data entering the system. | Processing time varies by provider. | Production data is collected continuously. No thermal imagery is processed. |
| Human effort | Processing is automatic. Measurement and anomaly detection run without human intervention. An expert confirms the class of every anomaly in the report. SolarDetech approves every inspection. Approval covers data acceptance and the upload link. Processing after approval is fully autonomous. | The share of human work varies by provider and workflow. | Monitoring is automatic. Alarms are assessed by the operations team. |
| Scalability | A 50 MW plant is processed in about 2 days. No upper limit is set on site size. Because processing is automatic, what increases with site size is the number of flight days. | Capacity varies by provider. | Covers every inverter in the plant. |
| Panel-level digital twin | Every panel's persistent identity, geographic position (block, row, table), electrical position (transformer, inverter, combiner, string) and measurement history are kept in one record. The record is updated after every flight. | Depends on the delivery format. | Total production and the inverter side are monitored. No measurement is made at panel level. |
| Work and maintenance management | Work orders are opened from findings, with assignment and status tracking. Each work order is closed on the same panel record. | Varies by provider. | Alarm and fault logging varies by system. |
| Price model | The platform is free. The inspection is priced by quote. | The price model varies by provider. | The price model varies by system and provider. |
The methods side by side
SCADA monitors the plant's total production and is indispensable on the inverter side. Panel-level thermal inspection measures each panel individually.
| Criterion | SCADA / inverter monitoring | Panel-level flight |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | Inverter or string totals | All panels on the site in a single flight |
| Measurement | Total AC output | Every panel from dozens of angles, on an AI-assisted processing pipeline |
| Location | No location information | Location by row, table and panel |
| Anomaly type | Not determined | One of 17 anomaly classes, with its priority |
| Production loss | Seen in the plant total | An estimated annual loss for every finding |
| Early detection | Panel-level loss can go unnoticed inside the totals for years | Anomalies are detected at an early stage |
| Tracking over time | No panel-level history is kept | A record for each panel across inspections |
SCADA monitoring and panel-level thermal inspection cannot be used in place of each other. SCADA detects a drop in production. Thermal inspection identifies which panel the drop originates from.
Which approach, when
- Live production monitoring and detection of inverter faults
- SCADA monitoring
- Outsourcing image processing to a provider
- Processing service
- Measuring every panel, viewing findings by row, table and panel address, closing work orders on the same panel record and tracking panel history across flights
- SolarDetech platform
- Identifying which panel a production drop originates from
- SCADA and panel-level thermal inspection together
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