zprávy

As photovoltaic plants age, their efficiency often falls due to the underperformance of one component or another, requiring PV plant owners to conduct expensive and time-consuming thermal inspections to get to the bottom of the problem. EASY PV, a GSA-funded Horizon 2020 project, is using remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) to provide a more effective and cost-efficient solution.

As Europe’s older PV plants start to reach over ten years of continuous operations, some of their individual modules and components are reaching the end of their design life span. The associated failures and breakdowns mean that plant owners are now paying a lot of attention to maintenance technologies and processes in order to enhance energy production at their plants.

High-quality EGNSS receiver

Thermographic analysis is the best and most effective way to locate defective cells and modules in PV arrays. However, thermal inspections, currently performed by operators with handheld cameras, are time consuming and can be expensive, due to the associated safety procedures required for those conducting the tests.

The current state of the art solutions exploit RPAS technology to gather thermal images. This reduces the time, costs and risks for personnel involved in maintenance operations. However, these solutions do not normally use geo-referencing techniques. This means that a huge amount of post processing work is required to get a PV plant status synthesis that is viable for the plant owners.

Responding to this need for a more efficient PV plant inspection solution, EASY PV (EGNSS High-Accuracy System Improving Photovoltaic Plant Maintenance) is building an automated system for acquiring, geo-referencing and processing images, both visual and thermal, using an RPAS equipped with a high-accuracy EGNSS receiver.

Marco Nisi, Head of Integrated GNSS Solutions at Sistematica S.p.A., the coordinator of the project, said that recent tests had shown extremely encouraging results. “The EASY-PV solution has had the experience of monitoring a dozen selected PV plants in Italy, mainly in Terni, Caserta and Cuneo. More than 98% of faulty panels were correctly recognised and a final report was generated in a very short period of time. This gives us the confidence to confirm our presence on the Italian market and paves the way to introduce the service all over Europe, thanks to our growing RPAS pilots’ and PV maintainers’ affiliation network,” he said.

Engaging with stakeholders

EASY-PV was presented at two energy events at the end of last year. At the first of these - the Key Energy trade fair in Rimini on 7-10 November - the GSA supported EASY-PV, attending as its main sponsor. At the event, the GSA also presented upcoming Galileo services that support energy-related applications to stakeholders in the energy value chain.

The second event was the O&M and Asset Management Conference in London in December, which was organised by the Solar Trade Association and SolarPower Europe (formerly the European Photovoltaic Industry Association – EPIA). The EASY-PV solution was presented as a case study at this event, which facilitated networking with peers, clients and suppliers. Galileo was introduced as a key element of the EASY-PV solution, with the GSA acting as a partner - promoting O&M best practice guidelines across Europe, increasing awareness and encouraging industry uptake.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

As photovoltaic plants age, their efficiency often falls due to the underperformance of one component or another, requiring PV plant owners to conduct expensive and time-consuming thermal inspections to get to the bottom of the problem. EASY PV, a GSA-funded Horizon 2020 project, is using remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) to provide a more effective and cost-efficient solution.

As Europe’s older PV plants start to reach over ten years of continuous operations, some of their individual modules and components are reaching the end of their design life span. The associated failures and breakdowns mean that plant owners are now paying a lot of attention to maintenance technologies and processes in order to enhance energy production at their plants.

High-quality EGNSS receiver

Thermographic analysis is the best and most effective way to locate defective cells and modules in PV arrays. However, thermal inspections, currently performed by operators with handheld cameras, are time consuming and can be expensive, due to the associated safety procedures required for those conducting the tests.

The current state of the art solutions exploit RPAS technology to gather thermal images. This reduces the time, costs and risks for personnel involved in maintenance operations. However, these solutions do not normally use geo-referencing techniques. This means that a huge amount of post processing work is required to get a PV plant status synthesis that is viable for the plant owners.

Responding to this need for a more efficient PV plant inspection solution, EASY PV (EGNSS High-Accuracy System Improving Photovoltaic Plant Maintenance) is building an automated system for acquiring, geo-referencing and processing images, both visual and thermal, using an RPAS equipped with a high-accuracy EGNSS receiver.

Marco Nisi, Head of Integrated GNSS Solutions at Sistematica S.p.A., the coordinator of the project, said that recent tests had shown extremely encouraging results. “The EASY-PV solution has had the experience of monitoring a dozen selected PV plants in Italy, mainly in Terni, Caserta and Cuneo. More than 98% of faulty panels were correctly recognised and a final report was generated in a very short period of time. This gives us the confidence to confirm our presence on the Italian market and paves the way to introduce the service all over Europe, thanks to our growing RPAS pilots’ and PV maintainers’ affiliation network,” he said.

Engaging with stakeholders

EASY-PV was presented at two energy events at the end of last year. At the first of these - the Key Energy trade fair in Rimini on 7-10 November - the GSA supported EASY-PV, attending as its main sponsor. At the event, the GSA also presented upcoming Galileo services that support energy-related applications to stakeholders in the energy value chain.

The second event was the O&M and Asset Management Conference in London in December, which was organised by the Solar Trade Association and SolarPower Europe (formerly the European Photovoltaic Industry Association – EPIA). The EASY-PV solution was presented as a case study at this event, which facilitated networking with peers, clients and suppliers. Galileo was introduced as a key element of the EASY-PV solution, with the GSA acting as a partner - promoting O&M best practice guidelines across Europe, increasing awareness and encouraging industry uptake.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The ESCAPE project, funded under the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) Fundamental Elements programme, has completed the preliminary design of its ESCAPE GNSS Engine (EGE), an innovative positioning engine that leverages the Galileo signal to provide a critical positioning component in autonomous vehicles.

To navigate autonomously and safely, vehicles require perception systems that locate, recognise, identify, and classify objects around them. The more complex the navigation functions, the more sensors are needed to achieve the degree of robustness required to drive safely in complex traffic conditions. This is where GNSS-based absolute location estimates come in.

Robust and safe positioning

The EGE prototype design includes several major components: a novel multi-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS receiver chipset for automotive use; the hardware and software architectures; and the algorithms for data fusion, positioning and integrity. It also covers a safety analysis of all the elements of the positioning engine. Consequently, the EGE will enable vehicles to navigate in high automation modes (SAE level 4) in various operational environments.

The positioning capability of the EGE is based on a complex algorithm produced by the GNSS sensor. Its measurements are integrated with those from an inertial unit (IMU) to provide the baseline standard point positioning function. A second positioning level is provided by precise point positioning, which gets sets of precise corrections from the Internet for the GNSS measurements. Finally, camera-based positioning, enabled by the processing of high-definition maps with lane markings and merged with other vehicle sensors, offers a third level of positioning, enhancing the other levels to achieve maximum possible accuracy.

The whole architecture of the EGE hardware has been conceived based the most recent practices in the design of automotive electronic control units, so that all the interfaces, configurations and form factors are compliant with widely recognised sector trends.

The GNSS receiver

The main distinguishing feature of the ESCAPE automotive-grade GNSS receiver is its ability to simultaneously process signals from two different GNSS bands and from different satellite constellations. Although this capability is common in high-end professional receivers, it is cutting-edge in the automotive Tier-2 panorama.

The receiver is also a first-of-a-kind device in its segment to support the new Navigation Message Authentication (NMA) service of Galileo, the additional anti-spoofing service to be offered by Galileo on the open E1 signal starting from 2018. Finally, the new GNSS receiver comes with several core signal-processing enhancements: better receiver sensitivity and tracking capability, multipath mitigation, more IF channels and flexibility in routing IF samples, jamming detection and mitigation, and optimisation of the GNSS data flow.

The result is an ESCAPE GNSS sensor that combines in a unique device a high-end GNSS technology traditionally reserved for professional applications, innovative dual-band Galileo processing, as well as all the hardware and software safety aspects that are needed to certify the component for the automotive market.

Fundamental information

Launched in October 2016, the ESCAPE project is led by the Spanish company FICOSA in collaboration with GMV, Renault, IFSTTAR, STMicroelectronics and the Istituto Superiore Mario Boella. The project is funded under the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) Fundamental Elements programme, a research and development (R&D) funding mechanism supporting the development of GNSS-enabled chipsets, receivers and antennas.

The project has now entered its second year, during which the first EGE hardware samples will be released, along with a sequence of three integration steps and tests distributed throughout the year. The second and final hardware release is expected during the project’s third year.

For more information, see: http://www.gnss-escape.eu/

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).