Sustaining Solar Industry’s Exponential Growth
Current Status of the Solar Market Growth
Cost of solar energy has been declining very rapidly for the past few years. According to IRENA’s 2019 Global Energy Transformation Report, utility-scale photovoltaic systems costs have declined %73 globally since 2010. Sunshot Initiative of US Department of Energy announced that they achieved their 2020 goal of $0.06 per kilowatt hour in 2017; much earlier than expected. A drastic decrease in the PV panel prices and government incentives of large economies have enabled the rise of the solar industry and signals a bright future for renewable energy.
However, as observed from the graph the trend in the price drop has slowed down, and there is a good reason for this. The efficiency of photovoltaic panels have significantly increased throughout the years, but currently, it has hit the plateau. Theoretical maximum efficiency of the current technology is about 33% according to Sven Rühle’s updated calculations on Shockley-Quesier Limit which initially suggested a 30%. Given that the best prices in the market give about an average of 24% we have a long way up to 33% and that will probably take some time. Developments in inverters and other components have also contributed in decreasing the costs, but they’ve also reached their plateau.
We need to drop the cost of renewable energy down to $0.01 to achieve the worldwide adoption of clean energy. Even if somehow the current 24% efficiency reaches its theoretical maximum, it will only be an improvement of 25% -of course assuming that the prices stay the same for a better technology- which in turn is not enough for the $0.01 goal. However, there is a significant enhancement point where we can help the industry reach its goal for brighter futures. It is by contributing to the solutions to other problems in a solar power plant.
Automated Drones Provide Solutions
Many industries such as construction, agriculture, and real estate have proven that drones have become valuable assets in their fields. 3D modeling, surveying, inspection, precise calculations, and progress monitoring are some of the main functions that commercial drones can execute. Additionally, autonomous flight technology has come to the point that most industrial drones can fly and gather data without any human to actively guide its path. Nowadays a drone operator’s main job is to carry the drone to the field, watch it fly autonomously, finish its mission and pack it away.
Collected data is then shared with the customer and processed in-house.
Optimizing the Cost of Solar Energy
Building a photovoltaic power plant is a complex process where there are many variables to consider. A considerable amount of time and money supported by expertise is needed to build a fully functional, error-free and profitable solar power plant. Although there are many tasks and subtasks before, during and after the construction of the PV power plant, a very high-level task list can be informally summarized as follows:
- Identification of the location
- Determining the grid connection point
- Pre-construction negotiations, on-site visits,and documentation
- Providing the default infrastructure: fence, CCTV, roads, etc.
- Procurement and logistics of the necessary equipment
- Installation of the supporting structures
- Installation of solar panels, inverters, and connections
- Setting up a transformer substation
- Link to the grid
- Monitoring the system
All of these steps need supervision, progress monitoring and documentation from the start. The fact that solar power plants continue to expand to cover vast and remote areas brings autonomous drones into play. At Soar Robotics we address some of the most time and money consuming problems during the lifetime of a solar power plant by setting up a fully autonomous drone-in-a-box system on the side
During the pre-construction period, our on-site autonomous flights generate actionable intelligence for site decision and planning. We build topographic maps, digital elevation models and orthomosaic maps with industry-grade geographical precision to be used in pre-feasibility and feasibility reports as well as a foundation for the solar site design.
During the construction period, our on-site autonomous drones monitor progress and report daily without the need for any human operator, thus streamlining the workflow of the supervisors on the field and improving communications with their superiors and subordinates. Our autonomous nested drone system is ready for deployment around the clock leveraging its self-charging and automated data acquisition and processing capabilities. The autonomous drone system tracks the progress of the construction and generates daily reports containing numbers, images, and visualizations of various monitored parameters such as support structures mounted, solar panels installed, cable holes dug, count of construction vehicles on the field and many more.
After the project the construction is over, it’s time for our autonomous system to monitor and inspect to decrease O&M costs. With periodical autonomous flights the system obtains high quality thermal and RGB imagery from the site. From thermal data, our algorithms detect cell, multi-cell, diode, string, combiner and inverter level defects. From visible spectrum data, our algorithms detect shattering, soiling, shadowing, vegetation and missing panels. Our software generates a detailed report of the detected faults and marks them on the as-built and RGB map of the site down to cell level, as well as showing all detected errors on a table; indicating string, row and module numbers with geolocations. We finally compute our clients’ total loss due to the inefficiencies caused by these faults and prioritize each depending on their importance and urgency.
As an optional service to the periodical model, our system is also able to provide sector and perimeter security and can dispatch immediately whenever a breach is detected by the CCTV or by other means. Security in remote areas is one of the biggest challenges of solar plants. By utilizing an autonomous drone system that offers a full service, we can address these challenges.
At Soar Robotics we believe that the future of clean energy depends on the broad adoption of residential, commercial and utility-grade solar power systems. We are also well aware that prices need to drop much lower for this to happen. Suppliers, pioneers, governments, and early-adopters have proven that solar energy can and will become a sustainable supply of clean energy very soon. We work hard to pay our share for this vision. We solve the inefficiencies caused by the obsolete data acquisition and processing methods by providing objective, measurable and actionable results in less time for lower costs to offer a new perspective on solar project planning, management, and O&M.
