A new drone-based inspection approach aims to address one of the growing challenges in utility-scale solar: how to collect accurate data from increasingly large PV sites within limited operating windows.
Israeli technology company vHive has developed a software platform that coordinates multiple drones during solar inspections, combining autonomous flight planning, thermal imaging, (Red, Green, and Blue) RGB mapping and digital twin capabilities. According to the company, the system is designed to allow solar operators to perform large-scale surveys without relying on highly specialized drone pilots.
The technology is based on commercially available drones rather than custom-built aircraft. Daniel Tomer, founder and CTO of vHive, explained that the company’s focus was not developing a new drone, but creating the software infrastructure required to operate fleets of drones efficiently.
“We started from the beginning looking at large-scale digitization,” he told pv magazine. “That, from a product perspective, led to product decisions like using off-the-shelf drones.”
The platform currently supports DJI Matrice 4 Thermal drones, which the company says provide a cost-effective solution for thermal inspections. According to Tomer, each unit costs around $7,500 and can be transported easily as part of a larger inspection setup.
The main technological challenge, according to vHive, is not the drone itself but the coordination of multiple aircraft during a single inspection mission. “A single drone is simple. You click a button and it flies,” Tomer said. “If you need to fly two drones simultaneously, if you do it yourself, then you need to do something like that, which is impossible.”
He explained that manually coordinating several drones requires continuous communication between operators, including information about location, altitude and flight paths. “If you want to use multiple drones, this again becomes impossible,” he said. “The coordination of the fleet and the orchestration of collecting everything in a comprehensive way is something that the system is doing.”
Rather than flying in formation, the drones are assigned separate areas of the PV site. The software divides the inspection area into sections using algorithms and assigns each drone its own region. “We employ sophisticated algorithms to segment the area into different regions, and each drone is covering its own region,” Tomer said.
The company said that the drones are intentionally separated to improve safety. When a drone’s battery is depleted, the operator replaces it and resumes the mission. “The operator becomes a battery manager instead of a flight operator,” Tomer explained. “They just need to replace batteries, and the drone keeps going up and down continuously.”
Large PV plants present particular challenges for conventional inspection methods, especially because thermal measurements require suitable weather and irradiance conditions.
Tomer said that operators often have only a limited daily window for thermal inspections. “You have a very small window of time where you can really do a thermal scan,” he stated. “Somewhere between four to five, six hours, that’s it.”
Missing that window because of changing weather conditions can result in significant delays, he added. The ability to operate several drones simultaneously is therefore intended to maximize the amount of data collected during suitable conditions.
According to Tomer, the number of drones required depends on the size and layout of the PV plant, as well as the installed capacity density. However, he said that parallel operations can significantly reduce inspection time. “If it takes you one hour with a single drone, then it’ll take you 30 minutes with two drones,” he said. “Then a third with three drones, and obviously a quarter with four drones.”
He added that there is a practical limit to increasing the number of drones operated by a single person. For very large sites, the company recommends using multiple teams operating multiple drones.
A key element of the platform is reducing the level of expertise required from field operators. Naomi Stol, marketing director at vHive, said that the economic advantage comes partly from avoiding the need for highly specialized drone pilots. “When we talk about the economics of using a single crew for all these drones, we’re talking about a crew that is not specialized, highly skilled specialized pilots,” she told pv magazine.
According to her, allowing existing field crews to conduct inspections can reduce operational costs and make large-scale drone surveys more practical. Tomer added the platform requires minimal interaction from the operator. Instead of manually controlling the aircraft, users select the area they want to inspect through the software interface.
“You just need to log in,” he said. “The system holds the information. Since we digitize your asset, we understand exactly where it is.”
The software already contains information about the site layout, including rows, structures and modules. Operators only need to select the relevant section, after which the system launches the drones automatically. “No sticks in the process,” Tomer said. “Sticks are for experts. We don’t do sticks. It’s autonomous.”
The inspection process combines thermal and RGB imaging. According to vHive, the drones collect both thermal data and conventional imagery during flights. “At the end of the inspection process, we are getting actually two orthophotos,” Tomer explained. “One that is thermal with precise thermal reading of temperature, and an RGB orthophoto.”
The RGB imagery provides visual information for identifying issues such as module cracks, while thermal imaging can help detect temperature anomalies.
Beyond inspection, the company positions its digital twin technology as a second component of the platform. Tomer described vHive as having “two hemispheres”: data acquisition in the field and digital understanding of the asset.
“The other hemisphere is the digital understanding of the field,” he said.
The company said that digital twins can provide detailed three-dimensional representations of solar assets, helping operators avoid unnecessary field visits.
“For solar, what we’re doing right now is providing advanced understanding of the site,” Tomer said, adding that the platform can support applications related to CAD and BIM models.
According to vHive, the increasing size of solar projects and rising electricity demand linked to artificial intelligence infrastructure are creating demand for more efficient inspection methods.
“The AI revolution is coming up, and the high demand for energy is driving scale for solar in particular in the renewable energy sector,” Tomer said, noting that manual inspections are becoming increasingly impractical as solar farms expand to hundreds of megawatts. “When you have those large-scale solar farms, a manual survey is just impossible at this point,” he said.
The company said its platform is already being used in real-world projects, although it did not provide customer numbers.
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