Sundrone Srl, a leading Italian company in the field of aerial inspections of plants for the production of renewable energy, controlled by Softeco Sismat Srl, a digital company of the TerniEnergia Group, is pleased to announce its participation in the African Utility Week 2019 from 14 to 16 May 2019 in Cape Town (South Africa).
Sundrone will present its innovative service for proactive and predictive operation and maintenance of industrial-sized photovoltaic systems.
The company’s mission is to bring into the world of aerial inspections with drones an automated system, which enables the post production of visual and thermographic analyzes to be reduced to a minimum and allows technicians to carry out results evaluations without having to conduct long and complex activities data extraction and interpretation.
Thanks to the integration with the skills of the TerniEnergia group, Sundrone offers plant owners, investment funds and utilities a “turnkey” solution for inspections and image analysis of photovoltaic fields and industrial infrastructure and facilities.
Furthermore, the close collaboration with Softeco has allowed the company to better develop the proprietary PVInspector software, used exclusively by Sundrone for advanced maintenance activities (proactive and predictive) of large photovoltaic plants.
In fact, Sundrone proposes to an emerging market such as aerial inspections with drones, the results achieved with the PV Inspector’s experimentation on a portfolio of plants managed by TerniEnergia and which counts, overall, a good 283 MW of solar energy production plants, on its own behalf and on behalf of third parties, including internationally.
In energy production plants, the control of efficiency and the functioning of technology and scheduled and operational maintenance are essential conditions to maximize and safeguard the investments of large companies and the services they provide to customers, users and citizens.
In all areas dedicated to the professional activity of operation and maintenance, punctual and effective inspections are at the base of the maintenance and optimization of an adequate operating standard. In cases in which these plants and infrastructures develop in height, they are particularly extensive, inaccessible or complex, the solutions proposed by Sundrone are the most advantageous and efficient ones to offer multitemporal monitoring of the highest detail.
Sundrone uses the Skyrobotic SR-SF6 drone: a multi-purpose VTOL platform with advanced automatic navigation features. The drone is optimized to carry payloads with innovative sensors, highly integrated with the proprietary image analysis software.
PVInspector, integrating with remote piloted aerial systems (drones) and with hi-tech sensors for visual and thermographic detection, allows surveys and inspections on large photovoltaic systems, reducing data capture and processing times.
The imaging analysis software solution returns – in fact – digital data that highlights the criticality of the plants, such as hotspots, malfunctioning or underperforming panels and strings; accurately determines the location of the panels in the system; it allows to graphically annotate the acquired images to highlight the anomalies found, to add textual notes and finally to automatically produce an inspection report which includes the descriptions of the anomalies detected.
The service, which can also be carried out on problematic and urbanized areas, allows the prevention and detection of plant failures, increasing the economic efficiency of O&M services, the financial performance of the same plants and reducing the time required to carry out operations.
