Sundrone, an Italian leading company in the aerial survey sector, controlled by Softeco Sismat Srl part of TerniEnergia Group, is pleased to announce that it will attend the African Utility Week 2019 from 14 to 16 May at Cape Town (South Africa).
Sundrone will present its innovative service for the proactive and predictive operation and maintenance of utility scale PV plants. The company’s mission is to bring an automated system to the world of aerial inspections with drones, which allows to minimize the post production of visual and thermographic analysis and allow technicians to make evaluations on the results without having to conduct long and complex activities of extraction and interpretation of data.
Thanks to the integration with the expertise of the TerniEnergia Group, Sundrone offers to plant owners, investment funds and utilities a turn-key solution for the inspection and image analysis of photovoltaic installations and industrial infrastructures and facilities. The close collaboration with Softeco has also allowed the company to make the best use of the proprietary software PVInspector, used exclusively by Sundrone for advanced maintenance activities (proactive and predictive) of large photovoltaic systems.
Sundrone, in fact, offers to an emerging market such as that of aerial inspections with drones, the results achieved with the testing of PV Inspector on a portfolio of plants maintained by TerniEnergia and which has a total of 283 MW of solar power plants, on its own and for third parties, also internationally.
In the power generation business, in fact, the effective control of the yields, of the technology operational parameters and the planned maintenance are essential conditions for maximising and safeguarding 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”, timely and effective inspections are the basis for maintaining and optimizing an adequate operating standard. In cases where these plants and infrastructures develop in height, are particularly extensive, inaccessible or complex, the solutions proposed by Sundrone are the most advantageous and efficient to offer a multitemporal monitoring of the highest detail.
Sundrone uses the Skyrobotic SR-SF6 drone: a VTOL multi-purpose platform with advanced automatic navigation capabilities. The drone is optimized to carry innovative payloads, highly integrated with proprietary imaging-analysis software.
PVInspector, thanks to the data collected with hi-tech sensors for visual and thermographic detection, allows to carry out surveys and inspections on large photovoltaic systems reducing the time of data capture and processing.
The imaging analysis software solution, in fact, returns digital data that highlights the criticality of the plants, such as hotspots, panels and strings malfunctioning or underperforming; determines precisely the location of the panels in the plant; allows you to annotate graphically the images acquired to highlight the anomalies found, add text notes and finally automatically produce an inspection report that includes the descriptive cards of the detected anomalies.
The service, which can also be carried out on urbanized areas, allows the prevention and detection of plant failures, increasing the economic efficiency of O&M services, the financial return of the same plants and reducing the time of execution of operations.
