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Research Outline
Prepared for Piotr V. | Delivered August 2, 2020
Solar Farm Inspection Market
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Goals
Gain an understanding of the market for drone based inspection and thermal imaging reports on solar farms of utility scale, as well as costs and outlook for the two types of services, and deeper information on existing companies in the industry.
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Early Findings
While there was no market size available solely for solar inspections by drone, the market for utility drone inspections is projected to grow by
28.94% annually
, to reach a projected $435 million by 2024.
The drone inspection space is expected to grow rapidly in the next several
years due to the rapid growth of solar panel installations,
up by 81% in 2019
compared to the previous year.
Drones are the most efficient tool to inspect a large scale solar farm, as they collect data
50 times more rapidly
than manual inspection from the ground.
Specifically, an expert source in solar farm inspection notes, "
Drones featuring thermal
imaging payloads allow operators to perform a full solar farm operation in a matter of hours, compared to days using manual methods. They increase data quantity and quality and reduce costs.
”
Because of the rapid
recent growth in solar installations
, demand for drone inspection has not yet been met with the majority of solar panel inspections still
p
e
f
o
r
m
e
d
manually with hand-held thermal cameras.
The key drivers for
demand of drone over manual
include cost efficiency, avoiding human risk, and better quality of information.
Using drones for solar panel inspection can allow for a
30-50%
cost reduction from manual.
The majority of drone operations for commercial and utility-scale solar installations are outsourced to
third-party inspection companies.
Companies large enough to do drone inspections of their solar panels in-house still tend to outsource data analysis,
sending information to a third-party company
for processing results.
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