DJI Dock 2 'a game-changer' for solar panel inspections

• Durham County Council describes DJI Dock 2 as a game-changer for solar panel inspections;

• Dock 2 conducts inspection of 23-acre solar farm in 1 hour and 20 minutes - shaving days off using handheld scanners;

• The Dock unlocks more regular inspections, facilitates on-demand data collection, and enables the creation of comprehensive datasets;

• heliguy™ is a DJI Dock 2 partner and can help organisations integrate it into their workflows.

An eco-friendly council has described DJI Dock 2 as a game-changer for conducting solar panel inspections at the UK’s first low-carbon depot.

Durham County Council has tested the drone-in-a-box solution for monitoring the 3MW solar farm that helps power its Morrison Busty facility.

The solar farm consists of 5,556 photovoltaic panels, spread across 23-acres - and staff have been inspecting the site on foot, using handheld thermal scanners.

This process is time-consuming, hindered by accessibility issues in the winter months when the field is too muddy to walk in, and can lead to data gaps.

But a DJI Dock 2 proof of concept demonstration - conducted by heliguy™ at Morrison Busty - showcased the benefits and potential of automated drone operations for inspecting a large solar farm.

The DJI M3TD thermal drone surveyed the site in an hour and 20 minutes - shaving days off manual methods.

The data was automatically uploaded to DJI FlightHub 2 and provided a view of the entire solar farm in one interactive model for comprehensive and detailed analysis.

Defects and faulty panelling, including a series of broken panels, were identified using the drone data.

And the ability to conduct on-demand operations enables more regular inspections - facilitating quicker identification and remediation of equipment-driven underperformance.

Louise Austin, Senior Carbon and Energy Officer at Durham County Council, is one of the authority’s thermographers who walks the field with a handheld scanner.

She said: “The solar farm is a vital asset to the Morrison Busty depot, so inspections are vital to ensure it is operating effectively.

“To manually collect data for this field you have to walk down each row of these solar panels and take photographs of what you find. It’s time-intensive, can be inaccessible at certain times of the year, it is easy to miss things, and you don’t get the detail that we’ve seen from the drone.

“The drone allows real-time data collection - which you don’t necessarily get with handheld scanners - and the Dock enables data to be collected when required, all-year round."

Drone Data To Feed AI Machine Learning

Morrison Busty reopened as a low-carbon site in the summer of 2023 following an £8.3m makeover, as part of the county council’s plans to reduce carbon emissions from its operations by 80 per cent by 2030, with the hopes of becoming fully carbon neutral by 2050.

In addition to the solar farm, the depot has a battery storage facility, private wire distribution network, and an extensive electric vehicle charging system.

It saves an estimated 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and reduces the council’s overall emissions by up to 4%.

There is also a connection to the local supply grid for the export of excess generated electricity.

The new systems are monitored and controlled by a Smart City AI management system to ensure optimal operation of the PV, battery storage, and electric vehicle charging systems and the monitoring and recording of system performance data.

And the drone data can be fed into this AI system to provide deeper insights.

Chris Jones, Principal Programme and Project Manager at Durham County Council, said: “The AI management system is connected to every section of the depot.

“It shows the savings that are being generated against previous years’ data, and as it learns it will start to remember that certain things will happen at certain times of the year, and it can start to make predictions. Nobody has done this before on this type of scale.

“This DJI Dock 2 linked into our current systems could be a game-changer.”

DJI Dock 2 Mission Planning For Solar Farm Inspection

heliguy™ pilots conducted the DJI Dock 2 mission on behalf of the council.

The portable Dock 2 was transported to Morrison Busty in the heliguy™ Drone Command Unit (DCU) vehicle.

The drone-in-a-box was sited on flat gravel flooring on the edge of the solar farm and was hooked up to the depot’s battery storage system for power and data connection.

The mission was created manually using a 3D model of the site which had been collected during a previous drone flight.

An overlap ratio of 90% was set and the point of solar radiation was directly aligned with the panel.

The DJI M3TD drone was flown at 40m above ground level, due to overhanging powerlines on site.

The live mission was displayed on screens within the DCU to simulate a remote operation, but heliguy™ team members were in the field to keep the drone in VLOS at all times.

Upon mission completion, the data was automatically uploaded from DJI Dock 2 to DJI FlightHub 2, providing visual and thermal insights.

The DJI M3TD has an integrated payload with three sensors: A 48MP wide-angle camera, 12MP tele camera, and an infrared camera with a standard resolution of 640 x 512 @ 30fps, or 1280 x 1024 @ 30fps in UHR infrared mode.

Drone-based aerial thermography has become the go-to method for inspecting utility-scale solar quickly, efficiently, and safely, but until now it has still required human intervention.

Drone-in-a-box technology is ushering in a new era of automatic and easily repeatable inspections.

Alex Williams, Technical Geospatial Specialist at heliguy™, said: “Defects that are invisible to the naked eye can present themselves clearly using infrared. In the case of solar panels, this may be due to disconnected lines or faulty panels.

“Being able to identify these issues with the speed and efficiency of drones can save valuable time, as there is no need for in-person physical inspection.”

Thermal Drones To Benefit Council

Durham County Council already utilises drones, but Chris believes the adoption of thermal UAS systems will further benefit operations throughout the Authority’s jurisdiction.

He said: “We have got 140/50 buildings throughout County Durham which have PV systems on their roof, we've got air source heat pumps on some roofs, we’ve got air handling units on some roofs, so thermal drones would allow us to see where we have significant areas of heat loss, reducing the time to get additional resources and to improve the security of Durham County Council’s assets.”

heliguy™ is a DJI Dock 2 partner and can help your organisation integrate the DJI Dock 2 into your workflows. We also have been approved a waiver to facilitate BVLOS Dock operations on behalf of our clients. To find out more, contact us.