How thermal imaging of solar PV by drones made my family’s dreams come true

Published September 2016

Paul Reynolds relives his childhood fantasies while helping improve the performance of solar assets

 What superpower did you want when you were growing up?

For me it was all about flying. I used to sit on a bench, staring up at the birds flying above me and wonder what they could see? What it would feel like to have the wind against my cheeks as I soared above the world?

For my brother (the weirdo) he always wanted X-ray specs – seeing things which others couldn’t really excited him. For my sister, she loved Captain Planet and wanted to: ‘take pollution down to zero’.

Only a dream?

Fast forward to the 21st Century, I was lucky enough to go to site last week to see Everoze’s latest offer – a drone with a thermal imaging camera, helping take pollution down to zero.

Dreams do come true!

Improved performance

In the image above you can see why my brother is so happy. The highlighted yellow line in the bottom right hand corner shows an area of high temperature, representing an issue with the panels (a defective bypass diode) that not only impacts the performance of that module, but the entire string, and in turn generation at the site. This type of fault is hard to test electrically and almost impossible to see with the naked eye – my brother can now see things other people can’t!

Personally I love flying around the solar farm. This freedom means that every module can be surveyed quickly and effectively – important as thermal imaging needs to be done in direct sunlight.

My sister is delighted because Everoze are helping solar operators improve performance, taking pollution down to zero!

Well done to Christophe, Jeremy and our partners FlyThru and ConversiO for making this happen.

If you would like to know more about Everoze’s thermal imaging and operational monitoring service or have any other weird super hero requests, please get in touch below.