aIR-PV-check: A quality inspection of PV-power plants without operation interruption

aIR-PV-check is a method using an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with an infrared (IR)-camera for the quality inspection of PV-plants under real operating conditions. It enables the fast and 100%-control of PV-plants. Defective modules are detected by their temperature distribution. Besides the meteorological conditions, the interaction of defective modules within a string influences the module performance significantly as the measured and simulated data show. Thus, modules with extremely high temperatures are predominantly expected / detected in strings with only one single defective module. Consequently, string configurations and constellations of defective modules have to be considered for evaluating the quality of modules, strings and generators.