Featured in Fork to the future – 09-2021

Game of drones

Drones have already established themselves in industries as disparate as warfare, wedding photography, and burrito delivery, and increasingly the solar sector is taking the high road, too. Combined with thermal imaging, drones have the potential to obviate expensive maintenance costs for large-scale solar plants, as well as C&I and growing niches like floating PV. But how useful are they, and what role does AI play in making the most of a bird’s eye view?

By

Blake Matich

07 Sep 2021

Image: Above

The efficacy of drones is perhaps nowhere more demonstrable than in comparison to handheld thermal inspections. Without drone accessibility, solar technicians have to walk the rows of solar farms with handheld thermal cameras in order to manually collect data, or at least, collect the data they can reach. This is no small task considering …

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