Empowering Renewable Energy Industry with Drones and Robots
Energy
Industrial Equipment
10 min readIntroduction
Industrial robots have been used for a myriad of applications in the manufacturing industry. Digitally controlled robots and drones have gained popularity in the last decade.
Nowadays robots and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are being used either separately or together in various sectors be it in automotive for self-driving cars, in manufacturing industries as welding robots, health care sector to perform surgeries, in the commercial sector and offices for cleaning and security, and also in areas where it is not possible to carry out human operations like nuclear clean-up, etc.
The renewable energy sector is not far behind in the use of drones and robots. Solar and wind farms present plenty of opportunities for use of drones and robots. Several solutions are currently used across the globe and are also under further development in the renewable energy sector. Developments in robots and drones can help improve efficiency at the plant, reduce overall cost, and also lessen the time required to carry out various activities across solar and wind farms.
Recent Advancements
Types of Robots
There are various types of robots like flying robots – drones, crawling robots, cleaning robots, construction robots, diving robots, sailing robots, and driving robots. Some of the main robots having applications in the renewable energy sector have been mentioned below.
Drone
These are one of the most developed robotics technologies being used in the renewable energy sector. Some of the major applications of these robots mainly include inspection of solar and wind farms, cleaning of the turbine blades, de-icing of turbine blades.
These drones can carry high resolution, Infrared, thermal imaging cameras which could be used to collect pictures and videos of solar and wind farms.
Wind turbine inspection
The use of drones is turning out to be a boon in wind turbine inspections. In the case of manual inspection, the operator needs to hang around with the help of rope and carry out wind turbine inspection. It is time-consuming and can create safety issues. The use of drones eliminates safety issues and gets the work done very quickly.
Solar plant inspection
Failed photovoltaic cells can be detected with the help of the lighter color of cells during an inspection. It takes a few days to inspect solar panels manually in an entire solar park and it’s a daunting task. Inspection by drones saves a lot of time and can be carried out in a few hours.
Solar plant layout
Drones help developers to survey the entire field and also help in the optimized fitting of solar panels on a piece of land more quickly than the traditional methods. Drones, robots, software solutions, and sensors are being used by various companies to design and build solar farms. It helps in the optimization of land used by solar farms by improving the layout.
Detailed images of land obtained with the use of a group of drones can be used to overlay blocks of solar panels, inverters, and other components of solar plants. The software can be used to fit as many components as possible in a layout. Factors like transmission line layout, a shadow from a nearby structure, slope of the terrain, etc. can be evaluated and looked after while deciding the layout with the use of the software.
De-icing of wind turbine blades
This is a new development in the applications of drones which can help in the de-icing of wind turbines. Drones can hover around wind turbine blades and can spray liquid across the nozzle to help in the de-icing of wind turbine blades. These types of drones are connected to the ground via a cable for the input of liquid. Cold climate locations comprise a staggering 25% of the world wind market and tend to have high wind resource. De-icing is very important to improve efficiency as ice gathered on the turbine blades during the winter season can affect power production by up to 20%.
Crawling robots
Crawling robots is still under research and development and are being used for inspection of wind turbines. Crawling robots can stick to the surface of wind turbines and carry out inspections such as ultrasonic testing and another near-surface testing which are not possible with other types of robots. These robots have magnetic wheels or other accessories which help them remain adhered to the surface of wind turbines. Developments are still happening in these robots for different ways to stick to the vertical surface while inspection.
One of the examples of these robots is The HR-MP series wheeled robots from Helical Robot. It uses magnets to cling to the turbine’s tower which is a metallic vertical surface. It climbs further via radio remote control to get a better look at the blades and other components.
Construction robots (Solar panel installation)
There are solutions of robots available in the market to carry out solar panel installations. These robots are preloaded with panels and move down the concrete railing system while affixing mounting legs to the concrete using high strength epoxy. It places the panels with pre-attached stiffening bars. A small team along with a single operator can extrude the concrete, load panels into the robot, and manoeuvre it.
Cleaning Robots
There are two types of robotic solutions in use for cleaning solar panels; one is dry cleaning robots and the other is robots using water to clean panels. Dry cleaning robots are more in demand due to very less or no use of water for cleaning panels. Dry cleaning robots help in saving gallons of water which would have been used for cleaning in the solar farms
Dry cleaning robots
Robots can dry clean each panel. There are robots that use two large microfiber brushes on eight wheels with brushes rotating at a high speed to generate airflow to remove most of the dust. Lead-acid batteries are used to power robots that are recharged using solar energy.
Wet cleaning robots
These robots use a wiper, scrub brush water, and even detergent for cleaning the solar panels. Wet cleaning is essential for areas that are heavily exposed to sand and bird droppings. These robots are also generally autonomous and can navigate and select their path for cleaning instead of being connected to a rail system.
Use of AI
AI is required in case of automating the flight of robots (drone) and also in case of analyzing the data gathered by robots.
In case of scanning and inspecting huge acres of lands for solar farms drones need to travel in a specific path to avoid missing any area. AI/automated drones can help here by pre-defined path for drones that can travel and scan the entire length of a solar farm.
In the case of a drone inspecting huge solar farms spanning acres of lands captures a huge number of high definition pictures and videos with many gigabytes of data that need to be analyzed. It is very time consuming for a human being to go through each picture and video (which is being done right now). AI tools can help in analyze this data in very less time and can also improve accuracy.
Challenges associated with the adoption of Drones and Robots
Regulations regarding the use of drones are a major challenge for the success of drones. There are regulations in many countries like flying insight (due to related safety issues) of operators which hampers the use of better AI-powered drones in large solar farms.
Some of the wind turbine inspection robots cost around US$ 20,000 and cleaning robots costs more than US$ 150,000. This is a very high initial investment unless you have very large solar and wind farms. Initial investment and payback period with the use of robots and drones are a major challenge in the progress of these solutions.
A battery used in drones used for aerial inspection at solar and wind farms plays a very important role. These batteries need to have features like good energy density and quick charging capability to further improve the payload carrying capacity and flight time of drones.
Impact of Robots and Drones
In some of the applications, like cleaning of solar panels manually with traditional methods and by using water would require days and months to achieve the desired efficiency of the solar plant. It would require huge manpower to clean solar panels. But now this can be achieved with help of a team of robots which can clean panels at night without any human interventions. Robots are being used to clean panels at many solar farm sites across the globe.
Mapping and layout of a solar farm with the use of drones would save months and make it faster by more than 50%. The survey project of a site by traditional methods would require dispatching a crew to gather various information on land to be used and would take a lot of time. Visual inspection of huge solar plants spread across acres of lands could take days to carry out by traditional manual methods. Inspection with the help of drones directly saves time and work can be done in a matter of a few hours. Pictures and videos taken by drones can be further analyzed in offices.
Regulations
Regulations for use of drones and robots vary across the globe.
Robots
Instructions from OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) provide guidelines to OSHA compliance officers, employers, and employees for the safe operation and use of robots and robotic systems. There is safety regulation regarding guarding methods, braking systems, and control panel. There are general regulations regarding marking zones for the movement of robots, limiting the motions of robots, and safety.
Drones
In the US drones are not allowed in the vicinity of a five-mile radius around airports and national parks. There is a height restriction of 400 feet above ground to fly a drone and it should be within sight of the operator. In Europe, to fly a drone some countries impose a limit of around 500 meters distance from the operator. In some European countries like France and Germany drones need to be registered before being used for any applications.
What next?
Further R&D in the use of AI to process data collected by drones and robots during an inspection of wind and solar farms will make these solutions more practical for use. This will save a huge amount of time and reduce shutdown costs for solar and wind plants. AI will also be useful to operate drones in a predefined path at large solar parks spanning over acres of land.
Improvements are happening in battery technologies across the world. The use of Li-ion batteries has resulted in drastic improvement and development of various solutions across industries like grid storage solutions, batteries for EVs, and others in the last decade. Further development in battery technology and reduction in the price of batteries for robots and drones will help in improving load-carrying capacity, flight time, and cost associated with drones. This will in turn help solar and wind farm developers to further reduce the initial investment and time required for laying out of solar plants, reduce O&M cost for solar and wind plants, and increase overall efficiency.
References
- Technologies empowering drones for intelligent monitoring of solar photovoltaic power plants
- Renewable Energy for Robots and Robots for Renewable Energy
- The autonomous future for drones and the energy sector
- Drones and Crawling Robots Will Soon Be Inspecting Wind Turbines
- Using autonomous robots to drive supply chain innovation
