How to Inspect a Solar Farm with a Drone - DJI Matrice XT2

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In this video we will be explaining step by step how to inspect a solar farm using a drone. We will start off by showing you how we first perform a physical walk through of each site looking for potential hazards and obstructions to the flight. We then examine the equipment for this particular inspection, and then we go through the best practices for solar drone inspections like obstructions to your flight, landing pads, and how to use a solar irradiance meter.
Next we touch on the importance of understanding all the aspects of weather and how it impacts your solar inspection. Everything from moisture, humidity, snow, and wind are addressed and then we begin our flight planning.
For this inspection we are using DJI GS Pro for flight planning and we will talk you through how to set up a flight plan, create the flight points, add the camera settings and pitch, the proper settings for the speed and altitude, and any “end of mission” actions we want to perform.
Once the flight plan is set up we move into the thermography setup using DJI XT Pro. We will explain why we use each of the settings such as Radiometric JPEGs for taking images and the importance of keeping the applications running during the flight.
Once the checklists are complete we take to the sky and fly the autonomous solar inspection flight. The entire flight today took just over 11 minutes to complete. Once the inspection is done we will take the drone back over the solar farm to show you what the anomalies look like on our thermal screen and explain the difference between the anomalies we found during the flight.
#drone #dronemapping #dronesoftware
►Resources
The Best Drones for Solar Inspections - thedronelifenj.com/solar-insp...
►Equipment Used in this Video
BT - 100 Pro Anemometer - amzn.to/3gH9O0c
DBTU1300 Solar Irradiance Meter - amzn.to/2Y3FBSh
►Our Must-Have Drone Equipment Checklist
✅ Budget Friendly Ground Control Points (GCPs) - bit.ly/3nAT2pH
✅ Most Reliable SD Card for Drone Mapping - bit.ly/3lZOhWn
✅ Heavy Duty Landing Pad - bit.ly/3zt1hXA
✅ Collapsable Orange Safety Cones - bit.ly/40Tr2fp
✅ OSHA Certified Safety Vest -bit.ly/3KsycSt
✅ Wind Speed Anemometer Gauge - bit.ly/3ZCaYO5
✅ Best Flight Planning Tablet - bit.ly/40Dci4q
✅ Handheld VHF Airband Transceiver - bit.ly/40AyLPP
►About The Drone Life
The Drone Life is an industry-leading UAS service provider that provides turnkey aerial data solutions nationwide. We proudly specialize in the industrial, environmental, renewable, and construction industries. Our team consists of highly experienced, dependable, and licensed drone professionals that are committed to safety, quality, and customer success.
Website - thedronelifenj.com
LinkedIn - / the-drone-life-nj
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►Chapters
Intro 0:00
Drones & Cameras 0:29
Inspection Best Practices 1:04
Weather Factors 2:33
Flight Planning 5:48
Drone Solar Farm Inspection 17:35
Manual Site Flyover 22:54
Outro 24:49

[@thedronelife]

Claim Your FREE GUIDEBOOK to Maintaining Solar Assets with Drones 👇 bit.ly/3V3LI4P

[@marcusgilmore4311]

Not all heroes wear capes!! Thanks for the info packed videos🙏

[@adriaanstruwig7921]

Really enjoyed the video, very informative!!

[@aaron6516]

Very cool and super helpful thanks!!

[@SolarPanelCleaningFriends]

Great video!

[@IceboxVideoProductions]

Brilliant!

[@Jack__________]

This was really helpful and eye opening!

[@thedarkriver1]

excellent! i have heard of this but have never seen it in action👍👍

[@woob5109]

perfect channel for beginners in this industrie, very helpful, looking forward to get your pdf

[@ImTetrahedron]

when you set up the flight plan, I realized I'm 20 minutes from you in SJ. Just a cool, random thing. Just got my part 107 and now researching.

[@pfzht]

Does that setup allow for simultaneous operation and recording of all the available camera functions or do you have to run extra flights for each captured version i.e. one dedicated flight for each thermal, one dedicated flight for solar irradiance, etc. Thank you for your time.

[@drewluthy6355]

Hey, what is the post processing software allow you to do with the images? You mentioned its able to identify some of the anomolies?

[@jerseyshoredroneservices225]

That was awesome! Thanks for sharing your process! I hate to say it but I think DJI might be planning to kill off the matrice 210 and ground station Pro :-(

[@Mike-yq6jg]

have you done a video on the work you do, back at the office and what software you use ?

[@terminatortechs8533]

Great video! I would add a note in the video about the 11 am - 3 pm scanning. As the panels rotate with the sun, so for bigger sites that tilt of panels would cause an issue during your scan if your capturing at a 75-80 degrees

[@thedronelife]

Great point. The time really can vary in each situation. If at 75-80 degrees the pilot would just need to adjust the camera tilt when the trackers move.

[@terminatortechs8533]

@@thedronelife I’m more or less talking about when you’re inspecting large sites which can take 2-3 hrs at which point the panels would face the other direction. I like the tutorial though you’re very detailed. I’m currently running a M300 & the process at which this is captured is totally different.

[@awlightpl]

Did u try to use for example DJI Pilot APP and theirs mission planning for inspection ?

[@jamesnechwedowich5741]

How do you think the new mavic 3 enterprise will work

[@fabiosuttle5926]

Great video. How would you price a job like this?

[@idresalkazeli8187]

Please can I have information about thermo camera we can used with depth between 5-10 cm under ground. So I worked with company of Mine action . We need make survey to find the items in different depth

[@souzaeq]

I`m in a home inspection (facade) small business. Really liked the digital twin for reporting issues and reports for customers. I don`t have the necessity for asset managing. Whatou would be the ideal drone/software to work under this scenario? Most of soft. aims asset management and have prohibitive prices for small business inspection. Great Video!

[@darkscorp007]

Try WebODM or Meshroom, both are free and open source. Disclaimer: I have used them only for RGB images so far, not thermal.

[@badmonkey2917]

Why wouldn’t you use the DJI pilot 2 app instead of the cut pro ?

[@michaelmac8154]

Very well done! What post-processing software are you using? Thanks!

[@thedronelife]

There are a few, Aerospec technologies, DJI recently made one, dronedeploy, raptor maps

[@michaelmac8154]

Thanks for the quick response! Two more questions . . . can you use the DJI Pilot App with the CrystalSky monitor versus GSPro? Any thoughts on using Pix4DMapper with the thermal images? Thanks!

[@thedronelife]

@@michaelmac8154 DJI Pilot app can be used, GSPro is the preferred method if you're using a matrice 200. Not sure about Pix4D Mapper. Don't have experience with that application.

[@michaelmac8154]

Thanks for the feedback! I actually have the same setup as you . . . Matrice 210 v2 with XT2 x 19mm. To date, I've only used GSPro with my Phantom 4 Pros, but will look into using it with my Matrice. Cheers!

[@amirhomayounsaffarzadeh2979]

Very impressive video. So, during the scanning period, when clouds periodically cover the sun, the irradiance will definitely fall below 600. In that case, how should we deal with the situation during or after (in the processing stage) the flight?

[@thedronelife]

When a large cloud blocks the sun, you want to press the pause button on the controller to halt the mission. The drone will sit there and hover until you tell it to resume once the cloud passes.

[@amirhomayounsaffarzadeh2979]

@thedronelife That sounds like it works, but if we have frequent periods of sun vs. clouds throughout the day, that would be really hard to pause the mission to many times.

[@thedronelife]

@@amirhomayounsaffarzadeh2979 If that's the case, you'd need to reschedule for a clearer day

[@amirhomayounsaffarzadeh2979]

I am afraid I haven't understood this correctly. It seems you have manually set the gimbal tilt to be almost perpendicular to the surface of the panels. I wonder if the software allows for such adjustments and will not return the gimbal tilt to -90 after every single shot.

[@HandMadeWrath]

@The Drone Life do you need years of experience to become a solar panel inspector-drone pilot?

[@RAFatturi]

Can you do these in winter?

[@thedronelife]

Yes, although the issues on the thermal camera may not stand out as much

[@gerardorios9885]

How much can you charge for that service?

[@Swing4TheRing]

Would a DJI Mavic Pro 2 Enterprise Advanced be able to capture relatively the same data?

[@awlightpl]

Yes, ofc a bit worse than matrice but still u can find spots and any other problems ;)

[@briankinyanjui2630]

Hi John. Awesome content! I just came across your KZbin page last week and I am so inspired to start this journey. I have read through your website and free PDF's. You are so generous for sharing all this information with us and I wish you all the blessings in the world. I would love to email you directly if you're okay with that? I'm already subscribed to your email list, should I use that?