Autonomous drone inspection solution prevents pilot visits to remote solar farms

Singapore-based drone technology player H3 Dynamics is joining forces with Sitemark – a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium – to launch a new robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring and inspection.

The partnership combines a drone-in-a-box solution from H3 Dynamics with visual and thermal analytics from Sitemark to automate and scale up remote monitoring operations in large solar farm installations. The solution can be enticing for many solar farms that have grown beyond human scale, often in remote locations, making a number of on-site operations increasingly difficult.

Sitemark brings a ton of experience in the field to the table. Its solutions have been deployed by companies like Total, Bouygues, EDF, Engie, and Orix to inspect over 30,000 ha of solar PV parks in 35 countries.

Meanwhile, H3 Dyanamics has recently launched a new product called DBX G7 – an agnostic drone-in-a-box platform – to automate drones from any manufacturer.

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The worthy partners envision automated drones to become the “eyes and ears” of solar farm owners and operators. Since their combined solution can be deployed permanently at any solar farm location, it can easily be used to track construction progress, identify solar panel degradation, as well as provide on-site security.

Michiko Lloyd, CEO of Sitemark, is positive that “the unique combination of Sitemark Fuse and H3 Dynamics’ DBX will change the way data is captured and processed throughout the entire lifecycle of solar power assets.”

And H3 Dynamics – which has previously automated inspections across smart cities, precision agriculture, water infrastructure, and ports – believes it is one step closer to shifting the global drone industry toward an open tele-operations paradigm.

“Our goal is to provide the world’s best data services from specialist vendors all over the world, available at any of our DBX installations globally,” company CEO Taras Wankewycz sums up.

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