Thermal drone inspections
Thermal analysis.
ANOMALY DETECTED
Commercial thermal drone inspections
Thermal drone inspections for commercial solar across New Jersey. Anomalies located, documented, reported.
Commercial thermal drone inspections
Drone thermal inspections that find what the eye misses. Commercial solar, across New Jersey.
The problem
Most solar problems don't look like anything. A blown fuse. A failing connector. A cracked cell. From the ground the array looks fine, and your production report just says something, somewhere, is down.
Not every warm spot is a failure. Each finding is a place to look closer, with its location on record.
What we do
A thermal drone pass over your installation captures aerial heat data on every panel. You get the anomalies, their locations, and a report built for follow-up.
How it works
Tell us about the site. We confirm scope, timing, and flight conditions.
The drone flies the array in a planned grid, capturing thermal and visual imagery of every panel.
Every frame gets reviewed. Thermal anomalies are identified, located, and classified.
A clear document: findings, locations, severity, and suggested next steps.
No handoffs. The pilot who flies your site is the analyst who reads the data and writes your report.
The flagship service
What the scan can find
A thermal camera doesn't see problems by name. It sees patterns, and reading them is the skill. This is the catalog behind every Solentra flight, ordered by how much production is on the line.
01Module level
Small on their own, easy to miss from the ground, and the earliest warning the array gives you.
02Obstructions
Something sits between the sun and the glass. Cheap to fix, expensive to ignore.
03String level
Whole groups of panels down at once: one fault, hundreds of modules, and it can sit invisible in a monthly production report.
Every frame we capture carries survey-grade GPS metadata from the drone's RTK module, so a finding is never "somewhere on the roof." It's a row and a panel, traced against your string layout.
String-level faults are why inspections pay for themselves: one offline string can quietly outweigh every other finding on the roof combined. The sample report below shows exactly that.
Industry standards
The industry's answer is written down. IEC 62446-3 defines outdoor thermal inspection of operating PV plants, and the accepted cadence is simple: scan every year, and scan again when something changes. Many insurers now expect the annual thermal record.
A baseline scan of the new array. Every future inspection is compared against it.
The annual thermal scan, following IEC 62446-3 practice. The record many insurers ask to see.
THE STANDARDFor harsh sites: coastal salt, heavy dust, nearby industry, or systems past their fifth year.
Hail can cut output while the glass looks perfect. Micro-cracks show up in infrared, not from the parking lot.
Find covered defects while they're still the manufacturer's problem.
Never had a thermal baseline? That's the place to start.
Cadence guidance reflects IEC 62446-3 practice and common insurer expectations. Site conditions, insurers, and equipment warranties may set their own terms.
Why Solentra
PV knowledge plus thermal technology. Behind the lens: a PV Associate credential and a purpose-built thermal drone. A thermal image of a solar array is only as good as the reading, and knowing how PV systems work is what turns pixels into findings.
Thermal inspection built around PV, not generic drone photography.
RTK-tagged frames put every finding on a row and a panel, not a guess.
Sized for large rooftops and installations.
Findings tied to locations and imagery, so nothing rests on our say-so.
Who we serve
Aerial thermal coverage for your maintenance program, without adding headcount.
Commissioning checks and warranty documentation for the systems you build.
Know what your installation is doing, beyond the monitoring dashboard.
Know the condition of every array across your portfolio.
The deliverable
Notes: Localized temperature rise at panel center under uniform sun. Pattern consistent with a possible cell-level defect. Recommend electrical verification by your service provider.
The report doesn't stop at "we found 47 anomalies." It estimates what each finding class costs in production every year it goes unaddressed. Here's that summary from an example inspection:
| Finding class | Anomalies | Modules | Est. affected DC | Est. annual impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cell-level hot spots | 10 | 10 | 1.16 kW | 2,310 kWh · $525 |
| Bypass diodes | 21 | 21 | 2.20 kW | 4,410 kWh · $1,102 |
| String-level faults | 16 | 304 | 95.76 kW | 191,520 kWh · $47,880 |
| Total | 47 | 335 | 99.12 kW · 1.83% | 198,240 kWh · $49,507 |
Sixteen string faults out of 47 findings, and 97% of the cost. That's the severity ladder from the catalog above, in dollars.
Illustrative figures for an example commercial array, rounded. Your report estimates impact from your system's own capacity, layout, and rates.
Reports flag anomalies for further investigation. Diagnosis and repair remain with your electrical or O&M contractor.
Referral program
Roofers, installers, O&M crews, property managers: you stand on commercial roofs every week. When you spot a solar array that's never had a thermal inspection, that's a referral, and we pay for it.
Rewards are paid once the referred inspection is completed and invoiced. One reward per referred property. Your code identifies you, so share it as yours alone.
Questions
Temperature differences. Hot spots, cool panels, offline strings. Each is an anomaly to investigate, not an automatic diagnosis.
Commercial rooftop and ground-mounted installations. Large arrays are the specialty, and that's exactly where climbing around with a handheld camera stops making sense.
No. Solentra inspects, analyzes, and reports. Repairs stay with your electrician, installer, or O&M provider, and our report gives them exact locations to start from.
Thermal and visual imagery, each anomaly's location and classification, side-by-side comparisons, notes, and a suggested next step per finding.
Flight time for a typical commercial array is measured in minutes, not days. Analysis and reporting follow within a few business days.
Yes. That's the point of the drone: rapid aerial coverage of installations that would take days to walk.
New Jersey.
A visual inspection sees what light shows: broken glass, debris, soiling. A thermal inspection sees heat, which is where electrical problems show up first. Many faults are invisible in daylight and obvious in infrared.
Request an inspection
Let's identify what the eye can't see.
