Delta Drone International has announced its agriculture specialist brand, RocketFarm, has piloted Africa’s first concentrated solar power plant survey (CSP).
The survey, which is a first in Africa and possibly the world, is extremely complex due to the constant movement of the tracking panels that move with the sun and the reflective nature of the plant’s mirrors that would produce a false reading if they were to reflect the sky or the ground.
By creating a 100 per cent custom solution that included a deep dive into code and re-training the thermal AI detection formula, RocketFarm was able to fly at the height and angles and take the images required to detect broken mirrors, defective heat elements and provide the customer an analysis on future performance and optimisation.
RocketFarm Project Lead, Zander Van Pletzen said: “With no existing guide, RocketFarm’s survey and data acquisition involved our crew flying a sample of the site at different angles, heights and speeds to conduct the survey and collect the data. Equipped with a multi-spectrum sensor (RGB & Thermal) provided the team with multiple points of data to analyse.”
“While flying is the simplest aspect of the mission, the interpretation of the data and analysis for the CSP plants owners and stakeholders has been a complex and insightful undertaking that will provide long standing benefits in maintenance, profitability and possibly greater uptake of CSP plants.”
Delta Drone International CEO, Christopher Clark said: “Many of our enterprise customers trust us to perform the surveys required to keep their multibillion-dollar operations functioning. These concentrated solar power plants cost billions to build and only the most experienced pilots with specialist expertise in agriculture, could code the complex algorithms required for this project. Our RocketFarm team are one of, if not the best UAV agriculture specialists in the world and this type of forward thinking has played a huge role in Delta Drone International securing fourth spot in the 2021 Top Drone Service Providers report by Drone Industry Insights (Droneii).
“This ground-breaking survey is no doubt set to transform the global energy sector for years to come.”
