Title | Post Processing Technique for Thermo-Graphic Images Provided by Drone Inspections |
Author(s) | Giuseppe Leotta, Paola Maria Pugliatti, Agnese Guiseppa Federica Di Stefano, Francesco Aleo, Fabrizio Bizzarri |
Keywords | Hot Spot, Thermography, Drone, Hough Transform, Defect Detection |
Topic | OPERATIONS, PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY OF PHOTOVOLTAICS (from Cells to Systems) |
Subtopic | Operation of PV Systems and Plants |
Event | EU PVSEC 2015 |
Session | 5CO.15.5 |
Pages manuscript | 1799 - 1803 |
ISBN | 3-936338-39-6 |
DOI | 10.4229/EUPVSEC20152015-5CO.15.5 |
Large-scale photovoltaic systems need extensive maintenance and a stringent regime of continued monitoring, scheduled inspection and preventive maintenance. Flight Infrared (IR)-thermography with remote controlled drones represents a fast and reliable tool for inspecting huge amounts of installed PV modules or hard-toreach roof mounted PV-plants. Thermal images have proven to be a valuable technique in identifying various failure mechanisms like: cell fracture, deficient solder joints, short-circuits or bypassed substrings. This paper shows the capabilities of a software application developed by Enel with the aim of handling thermal films carried out by unmanned inspections in solar PV plants. The images to be processed and analysed are thermographic inspections detected by remote controlled drones during flight times of 10-20 minutes. This could be extended also to electroluminescence (EL) in case of EL inspections are provided. The software application will allow for the automatic identification of failed PV modules by processing IR-films provided as the output of each drone inspection.