DroneBase, a California-based provider of intelligent aerial imagery for high-value infrastructure, with customers in the solar, wind, construction and critical infrastructure industries, announced the first set of solar asset ratings, in conjunction with expansion of its solar scanning to cover all of North America.
The solar industry is scaling on a significant level, thanks in part to the Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act, which passed as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The Department of Energy forecasts growth of 60 gigawatts (GW) of solar deployed annually from 2025 to 2030.
This move by DroneBase will provide better oversight of solar power plants by providing a standardized system for evaluating conditions through assessment of power loss, cell temperature and module condition.
“Until now, there has been a lack of transparency and visibility into the overall status and condition of assets,” said Mark Culpepper, general manager of global solar solutions at DroneBase. Along with transparency, DroneBase’s standardized ratings calculated by using in-depth data is expected to increase safety in the U.S. solar industry.
The company’s North American Solar Scan uses manned aircraft to collect thermal and RGB views of solar assets. DroneBase then assigns a simple three-letter asset rating system, similar to the common investment-grade bond rating system, in which each letter represents a specific aspect of a solar site’s overall condition.
The first letter reflects the operating condition of the site, based on information gleaned by thermal sensors regarding components that are failing, which is used to estimate direct current losses at the power plant.
The second letter indicates the highest recorded temperature of photovoltaic cells, with individual parameters for roof-mounted versus ground-mounted assets. Elevated temperatures can reveal possible safety or liability risks.
The third letter represents the condition of the modules used by comparing the number of anomalies per megawatt peak. More anomalies per megawatt often indicate the possibility of more problems with the modules.
The deep-scanning capability delivers detail at the cellular level, offering visibility into component failures. Real-time data enables clients to recover revenue and reduce risk.
Data can be accessed on the DroneBase Solar Insights web platform, allowing investors and others to view the condition of solar plants or to leverage the ratings to identify assets for acquisition or sale. The ratings can also provide time- and money-saving insight through scheduled maintenance and preventable downtime.
DroneBase has completed scanning and processing 16 GW of solar plants and 20% of large-scale solar-generated power in the United States. By the spring of 2023, the company hopes to be able to offer scans of all U.S. solar plants of 1 megawatt or larger—approximately 80 GW—on the DroneBase Insights platform. Currently, customers can subscribe to access sites in California that have been scanned.