Use this free calculator for a rough annual comparison of drone thermal inspection versus a ground-crew handheld-IV-curve or IR-camera baseline on a utility-scale array. It is a planning aid only — every array, contract and crew rate differs, so the defaults below are placeholders you should replace with your own numbers. For a firm quote and a measured deliverable, request a scoped inspection.
Rough estimate only. Replace the per-MW rates with quotes for your site. This compares inspection cost alone; it does not price the production upside of finding underperforming strings sooner, which is often the larger number.
Why aerial thermal changes the math
The direct saving above is only half the story. A ground crew sampling with a handheld IR camera or IV-curve tracer covers a fraction of the modules on a large array and takes days. An aerial radiometric thermal scan images every module in a fraction of the time, so faults get found and fixed sooner. On a revenue-generating asset, recovering even a handful of underperforming strings weeks earlier can dwarf the inspection-cost delta this calculator shows.
What a measured solar thermal inspection delivers
- Every-module radiometric thermal scan across the full array
- Severity-ranked anomaly report — hotspots, failed bypass diodes, string outages, PID, soiling patterns
- Each anomaly geo-located to the module for the O&M work order
- Orthomosaic of the site plus a report in the format your asset team expects
- Repeatable annual or commissioning cycles so degradation is comparable year over year