EGNSS high Accuracy SYstem improving PhotoVoltaic plants maintenance

The purpose of the EASY PV (EGNSS high Accuracy SYstem improving PhotoVoltaic plants maintenance) project is to provide a time and cost effective service as direct response to the growing need expressed by several maintainers and PV field owners to enhance the energy production of their plants.

As photovoltaic plants are aging, it is not uncommon that their production lowers due to inefficiency caused by unknown modules on the plant; in fact a significant number of modules might result defective, lowering the whole plant’s productivity. Thermal inspections are valuable for PV owners and maintainers, but relevant procedures, currently performed by operators with handheld cameras, are time demanding and sometimes expensive due to safety costs for the personnel involved in the operations (e.g.: PV modules on roofs, rough areas, …). It stands to reason that today such operations are not fully automated yet and the responsive recognition of a broken module might result very difficult in a large PV plant.

As a first improved solution, the growing technology of RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems) is exploited to gather thermic images which are geo-referenced by GPS positioning and processed by computer vision algorithms. However this configuration is very respectful but still not enough in order to provide the required positioning accuracy for the automation and fast identification of the broken modules. Only the aid of accurate positioning allows a cost effective solution to reduce time, costs and risks for personnel involved: the added value provided by the employment of GNSS high accuracy solutions as novelty in the RPAS domain is the key driver for the EASY PV turnkey solution.

Finally EASY PV solution is conceived to build up an automatic system for acquiring, georeferencing and processing both visible and thermal images captured by an RPAS equipped with a Galileo/EGNOS high accuracy receiver, flying over a photovoltaic field. In this way it is possible to easily (i.e. automatically, with safety improvement for operators and saving time) detect the defective module to be replaced.

Along with this first period (MTR) the following achievements are obtained:
- Finalisation of user need and relevant system requirements
- First iteration of market analysis
- Detailed study in involved technologies (i.e. suitable GNSS techniques and configuration, RPAS regulation, end-to-end algorithm including computer vision) which is described in a dedicated technical note also reporting preliminary test activties
- Dissemination activities to promote EASY-PV concept

Major progress beyond state of the art
To build up an automatic system for acquiring, georeferencing and processing both visible and thermal images captured by an RPAS equipped with a Galileo/EGNOS high accuracy receiver, flying over a photovoltaic field. In this way it is possible to easily (i.e. automatically, with safety improvement for operators and saving time) detect the defective module to be replaced. The actual progress is in the automation of activties today realised in post progressing approach. This feature may allow to save time and as conseuqence costs associated to maintenance operations.

The claimed major impacts are
- Adoption of GNSS technology as key enabling technology to PV plant monitoring application domain
- Job offer fostering (which is a goal claimed within the Europe2020 framework) as EASY-PV project foresees an affiliation network composed by RPAS pilots collaborating with the consortium
- PV owners and maintainers awareness raising so that the EASY-PV exploitation may contribute to imporve the energy production efficiency (which is a goal claimed within the Europe2020 framework)

Currently the EASY-PV solution has not yet fully implemented, so that the above impacts are partially achieved

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EASY Pv (EGNSS high Accuracy SYstem improving PhotoVoltaic plants maintenance)

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