c/showcase•Posted byu/aerialprospex•2 months ago

Before/after of a 200-acre solar farm installation

Just wrapped up a 14-month monitoring project for a utility-scale solar farm. Weekly flights from bare dirt to energized panels.

Some interesting things we learned:

Grading tolerance monitoring caught $400k in rework before panels went up
Panel alignment verification saved 3 days of manual QC per section
The time-lapse from 60+ flights is marketing gold for the developer

300,000+ images processed, 60+ orthos generated. Processing workflow was Pix4D with DroneDeploy for client sharing.

Huge project but incredibly rewarding to see the full lifecycle captured.

Comments

Quinn_UAS•2 months ago

The grading tolerance monitoring alone justified the entire drone program. This is the kind of ROI story that wins contracts.

Did you fly with RTK for the entire duration or use GCPs? Curious about maintaining consistent accuracy over 14 months.

jess_aero•2 months ago

Would love to hear more about the panel alignment verification process. We're pitching a similar project and need to articulate the value proposition to the EPC contractor.

What accuracy were you getting on individual panel positioning?