Low-Cost Aerial Electroluminescence (aEL) of PV Power Plants

This article uses electroluminescence (EL) alongside Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in photovoltaic (PV) power plants in order to detect faults quickly, efficiently and at the lowest possible cost. Different failures were analyzed using a low-cost aerial electroluminescence (aEL) alternative setup. To validate the equipment and the technique, an experiment was performed at night with an infrared thermographic (IRT) camera and both a high-quality and low-cost EL camera. It was shown that the same faults could be observed with both EL cameras, but not necessarily with the IRT method. The low-cost aerial EL camera presented a good fault detecting efficiency.