Planning for PV plant performance monitoring by means of unmanned aerial systems (UAS)

Grimaccia, Francesco; Aghaei, Mohammadreza; Mussetta, Marco; Leva, Sonia; Quater, P. Bellezza

doi:10.1007/s40095-014-0149-6

Cited by 96 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 13 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…These data are used for deterioration analysis [9], preservation [1], or energy efficiency measuring [13]. Inspections in open, uncrowded spaces yield good results with low effort due to mostly planar path-planning and a lack of obstacles [8,14]. In above ground construction however, the automated employment of UAVs reveals more complex challenges.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating and Executing UAV-Assisted Inspections on Construction Sites

Freimuth¹,

MÃ1⁄4ller²,

KÃ¶nig³

2017

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)

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-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are an established utility for remote sensing and mapping purposes. Practical applications emerge in the form of inspecting structures that are hard to reach, deterioration analysis, construction monitoring or quantifying material in landfills. From a technological perspective most of these applications rely on the same established method, manual piloting by experts. While ongoing research is focused on developing reliable means of obstacle avoidance, sophisticated mission planning solutions can greatly increase the practicality of UAVs for inspection purposes. We propose an inspection planning concept for highly automated inspections in BIM projects. The application, developed in the course of this research, interacts with the firmware and the simulation capabilities of the Dronekit framework, which makes for a highly integrated and sustainable UAV. The main contribution is the 3D simulation of planned flight missions with Software-In-The-Loop (SITL) technology. The inclusion of actual flight dynamics allows the operator to perceive an authentic representation of the UAV's behaviour before take-off. Furthermore, the webbased planning application renders preview images in the virtual scene which provide a realistic impression of the results to be expected. The application automatically generates the different waypoints for obtaining photographs of a Point of Interest (PoI).

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Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating and Executing UAV-Assisted Inspections on Construction Sites

Freimuth¹,

MÃ1⁄4ller²,

KÃ¶nig³

2017

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)

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“…7). During each measurement, the temperature of the PV module was measured using the Fluke Ti25 infrared thermo-camera [16]. In addition, the global irradiation on the PV surface was measured through the sensors of the meteorological station.…”

Section: Current-voltage Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency analysis of PV power plants shaded by MV overhead lines

Dolara

Lazaroiu

Ogliari

2016

Int J Energy Environ Eng

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This paper deals with the occurrence of hot spot phenomena in photovoltaic (PV) systems under partial shading caused by objects on some parts of the modules. An interesting case of diffuse shadows is determined by overhead distribution lines whose path crosses or are in the proximity of the PV power plants. Investigating the impact of these shadows on reducing the power production of PV or on damaging the PV modules as the modules' temperature is increasing, is of high interest. At the SolarTech laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, the conditions for hot spot phenomena occurrence due to the overhead lines shading the PV cells were reproduced. Two experimental campaigns were carried out to investigate the currentvoltage and power-voltage characteristics, and the energy production. In each experimental campaign, the built shading structure was considered fixed and different shading conditions were created based on the natural displacement of the sun. The hot spot phenomena was revealed on a field PV installation in Italy, caused my medium voltage overhead lines shading the PV cells, using infrared imagery.

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“…Recently, a PV power plant monitoring technology has been developed that uses UAVs equipped with thermal imaging cameras (Buerhop and Scheuerpflug, 2014;Grimaccia et al, 2015). This is a promising technology for monitoring largescale PV power plants as it can rapidly scan a large PV array field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Fault Recognition of Photovoltaic Modules Based on Statistical Analysis of Uav Thermography

Kim

Youn

Kim

2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:As a malfunctioning PV (Photovoltaic) cell has a higher temperature than adjacent normal cells, we can detect it easily with a thermal infrared sensor. However, it will be a time-consuming way to inspect large-scale PV power plants by a hand-held thermal infrared sensor. This paper presents an algorithm for automatically detecting defective PV panels using images captured with a thermal imaging camera from an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). The proposed algorithm uses statistical analysis of thermal intensity (surface temperature) characteristics of each PV module to verify the mean intensity and standard deviation of each panel as parameters for fault diagnosis. One of the characteristics of thermal infrared imaging is that the larger the distance between sensor and target, the lower the measured temperature of the object. Consequently, a global detection rule using the mean intensity of all panels in the fault detection algorithm is not applicable. Therefore, a local detection rule based on the mean intensity and standard deviation range was developed to detect defective PV modules from individual array automatically. The performance of the proposed algorithm was tested on three sample images; this verified a detection accuracy of defective panels of 97% or higher. In addition, as the proposed algorithm can adjust the range of threshold values for judging malfunction at the array level, the local detection rule is considered better suited for highly sensitive fault detection compared to a global detection rule.

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Planning for PV plant performance monitoring by means of unmanned aerial systems (UAS)

Cited by 96 publications

References 13 publications

Simulating and Executing UAV-Assisted Inspections on Construction Sites

Simulating and Executing UAV-Assisted Inspections on Construction Sites

Efficiency analysis of PV power plants shaded by MV overhead lines

Automatic Fault Recognition of Photovoltaic Modules Based on Statistical Analysis of Uav Thermography

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