The morning sun is rising, and the sun is shining. In the early morning, in the Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station of Hubei Energy, which belongs to the Three Gorges Corporation, large photovoltaic panels gradually glow golden in the morning sun.
Facing the morning light, various intelligent equipment such as robots and drones in the power station started their day's work, using "AI" capabilities to ensure the safe and stable operation of the power station.
▲Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station in the morning light Photo: Cui Xubo
Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station is located in Yanjiahe Town, Macheng City, Hubei Province, with an installed capacity of 100,000 kilowatts, consisting of 320,000 photovoltaic panels, distributed on the surrounding 3,500 acres of hilly slopes. In the past, it took about 40 days for a group of 4 people to inspect the entire photovoltaic area, but now it only takes 1 drone and 7 days to complete a round of inspection.
The drone warehouse is automatically opened, and the inspection drone goes out on time to "go to work", through high-definition images and infrared monitoring, the temperature, shape and other information of each photovoltaic panel equipment are clear at a glance, and various types of fault defects such as grass and tree blocking, surface stains, diode failures, string open circuits, and panel missing will be accurately identified and located by the drone.
▲Drone inspection of the photovoltaic area Photo: Cui Xubo
"The dark red color here indicates that the temperature is abnormal, and it should be that the diode is faulty. In the central control room of the power station, Yan Jun, the chief of the power station, is checking the drone inspection report automatically generated by the system, and arranging operation and maintenance personnel to go to the site to review and deal with the fault.
▲O&M personnel are troubleshooting Photo: Cui Xubo
"The photovoltaic area is large and there are many modules, and in the past, diode faults were measured manually with a thermal imager, and generally could only be sampled for inspection. Now, drone inspections are not only more efficient, but also more accurate. Fan Wenwu, an operation and maintenance worker, was full of praise for this "new colleague".
At the same time as the drone guards the photovoltaic area, in the booster station of Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station, two indoor and outdoor inspection robots with autonomous navigation functions are also inspecting according to the preset route, which can accurately monitor and scan the knife switch, circuit breaker position, contact temperature, instrument display, operation sound and vibration and other states of the inspected equipment and extract information, conduct online analysis and decision-making processing of these data information in real time, and upload the information to the superior platform at the same time.
"It takes about half an hour for all the booster stations to complete a round of inspection, and the frequency of inspection has been increased from the previous manual inspection 3 times a day to the current machine inspection 6 times a day, which can find and solve problems in a more timely manner, and the safety and stability of the power station operation has also been greatly improved. Yan Jun said.
▲The inspection robot is inspecting the equipment of the booster station of the Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station Photo: Cui Xubo
Yanjiahe photovoltaic power station was completed at the end of 2015 and connected to the grid for power generation, and in 2022, Hubei Energy will intelligently upgrade it, not only realizing the automatic inspection of drones and robots, but also installing a smart "brain" for the station - a smart photovoltaic operation and maintenance integration platform, which can integrate sensing, execution, control and management technologies to realize information collection, analysis and processing, intelligent diagnosis, early warning and other functions.
"The strong 'AI' capability has improved the operational reliability of the power station, while the overall power generation efficiency has increased by 10%. Zeng Hanbing, general manager of Hubei Energy New Energy Company's Northeast Hubei Branch, said.
The author of this article is Cui Xubo