U.K.-based services and software company Above Surveying has added condition monitoring and quality assurance support to its digital twin tool for large-scale PV – Solargain.
The extended functionality is enabled by partnering with Germany-based Kiwa PI Berlin and 2DegreesKelvin, based in the U.K.
“The geospatial sprawl of solar photovoltaic assets is trending wider and larger, while adoption is growing ahead of skills,” Will Hitchcock, Above Surveying’s CEO and founder, told pv magazine. “So we have to use digital tools and drones to work efficiently, accurately and maintain productivity.”
“We started nine years ago with drone surveying. The large amount of data gathered catalyzed the development of Solargain,” he also explained. “There was a need to take data out of siloes and integrate it in one place. Now our data is becoming richer and more diverse to enable predictive insights and condition monitoring.”
Some of the other trends driving demand, in addition to the growth in the use of aerial inspection, are the increasing size of PV assets, the impact of more severe weather events, and the use of newer PV cell technologies in the field.
Made for a range of users, including PV asset owners, operations managers, and technicians, Solargain supports development and management tasks. For example, design and topographic mapping, construction project management, thermographic panel inspection, high-definition inspection, operations and maintentance (O&M). It is populated with geospatial and electrical data unique to each solar plant, integrates drone thermography data, and provides data and analytics.
The digital twin technology supports visual inspections and serial number scanning. It can also help to inform business decisions, addressing the problem of unstructured data, which can make it difficult for asset operators and owners to be able to answer questions about yield trends over time, or timing of investments in repowering, or gathering information for warranty claims.
The most recent expansion of the functionally is enabled by a collaboration with quality assurance, engineering, and inspection providers Kiwa PI Berlin and 2DegreesKelvin to provide subscribers with extended access to module data that starts at manufacturing pre-shipment audits and inspection, through to post-shipment, post-installation testing data, asset digitalization, and further to operational monitoring.
“We believe the collaboration will reduce quality risks. In the future, we will add autonomous robotics, a drone-in-a-box solution, that will be able to perform 24/7 condition monitoring in the field,” said Hitchcock.
Above Surveying, founded in 2015, has worked on over 5,000 surveys globally.
