01 — Real inspection
Municipal array,
nothing reported
A local municipality asked us to inspect their solar farm. The site was producing normally and the monitoring system had flagged nothing. The thermal pass returned a register of low- and medium-severity anomalies — not failures yet, but the signatures that precede them.
Register extract
Each anomaly is pinned to its exact module using row–table–module addressing, with peak temperature and screening delta recorded against it. This is what your O&M crew receives.
R36-T01-M75
MediumPeak 85.6 °F · 18.4 °F screening delta
R48-T01-M74
MediumPeak 87.8 °F · 20.7 °F screening delta
R31-T02-M13
LowPeak 84.0 °F · 16.7 °F screening delta
Extract of three · full register delivered per site · client withheld, proprietary
02 — Deliverables
What lands in
your inbox
Not a folder of thermal images. A report that tells your maintenance crew which module, in which row, and how urgently — with the imagery attached as evidence.
01
Anomaly register
Every fault found, classified by severity, addressed to row, table and module — with peak temperature and screening delta recorded against each one.
02
Site thermal map
The whole array stitched into one georeferenced thermal image with every anomaly pinned in place — pan the site and see the distribution at once.
03
Paired RGB imagery
Visible-light capture of every flagged location, so physical damage, soiling and debris are documented alongside the heat signature.
04
Baseline for next time
Fly it again next season and the comparison is direct — you see what degraded, what held, and what your last repair actually fixed.
03 — Why thermal
A dead panel
looks fine
An underperforming module is visually identical to a healthy one. Production data tells you a string is down; it does not tell you which of the ninety modules on that string is the cause.
Heat does. A cell that has stopped converting light dissipates it instead — and radiometric thermal reads that difference from altitude, module by module, across an entire site in a single flight.
- Single hot cell
- Cracked or shaded cell
- Warm stripe across a module
- Bypass diode failure
- Whole module elevated
- Disconnected or open circuit
- Entire row uniform
- String or combiner fault
04 — How it runs
01
Plan
Array layout, airspace and access reviewed before we mobilise. Irradiance conditions set the flight window — thermal taken in the wrong light is worthless.
02
Fly
Automated grid at fixed altitude and overlap, radiometric thermal and RGB captured on the same pass. The array stays live and producing throughout.
03
Analyse
Imagery stitched and temperature-calibrated, then every anomaly identified, classified by severity and addressed to row, table and module.
04
Deliver
Register, site map and paired imagery handed over — in a form your crew can act on without needing to interpret thermal data themselves.
Ask us how we can help
with your next project
Tell us the array size and location. We will come back with the flight window, the deliverable and the number — usually same day.