Analysis of the evolution and impact of IR detected anomalies on photovoltaic power plants

This thesis work, carried out in collaboration with the companies Archetipo srl - specialized in the development and provision of services related to urban, industrial and agro-environmental monitoring through the reprocessing of images acquired with professional drones or from satellite platforms - and Esapro srl - specialized in the design, installation, maintenance and monitoring of photovoltaic power plants - aims at analyzing some high-power photovoltaic plants owned by as many companies in the Veneto region, taking into account the evolution of the anomalies detected through the use of drone-mounted thermal imaging camera over at least 3 years, and the impact that the number, the morphology and the severity of these anomalies have on the productivity of the photovoltaic modules. During my experience at Archetipo srl, it was possible for me to learn the procedure for the creation of RGB and infrared orthophotos through the Agisoft Metashape software, which are the starting point for the vectorization and characterization of photovoltaic modules according to their temperature gradient, in order to perform the thermographic analysis of the anomalies that are present. In a second phase, using plant production data provided by the companies who made themselves available for collaboration for this thesis work, I calculated the power, the voltage and the electric current values of each plant, neglecting the presence of any type of anomaly, and I compared them with the measured values, in order to determine the incidence of the actually present anomalies on the photovoltaic plant performance.