06/21/2025
Do you know how your solar panels are performing? Newer systems often include micro-inverters that allow monitoring of individual panels, but some systems use string inverters that combine entire sections of panels. When damage or failures occur in individual panels, it can be difficult to tell the difference between any number of factors causing a decrease in performance and actual panel failure. Thermal imaging inspections can be a solution to that problem. This picture is of an actual solar panel array where I discovered almost 30 panels with some degree of failure, many of which causing critical failure of performance. The entire system was running through two inverters. This, coupled with a lack of vigilance in watching performance allowed these failures to go unidentified for a long time. Only my thermal imaging equipped drone was able to identify the problem which was likely costing the client tens of thousands in lost energy production.
