Inspection of Photovoltaic and thermal power plant using unmanned aerial vehicle

Unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming reliable and useful instruments in monitoring and diagnostic services in energy field. Operation and maintenance is a crucial factor for photovoltaic (PV) plant and thermal power plants inspection and control activities, which currently are quite hard to be performed due to manual and dispersive procedures. This project poses a comprehensive and innovative approach in order to inspect and provide information on operating conditions of PV plant and thermal power plants. This project also includes design, calculations of the unmanned aerial vehicle. The temperature measurement of solar photovoltaic modules using the custom-made system composed of an infrared temperature sensor and a microcontroller. The obtained measurement results are processed, displayed and stored on a PC using the custommade virtual instrument. The proposed system overcomes some of the problems related to the contact sensor application, and at the same time offers accurate readings and better flexibility. The proposed system is especially suitable for applications where the cost is a limiting factor in the choice of measuring system. The data transfer is wireless and can be monitored on the screen.