Drone-based solar farm inspection company Lab 360 gets $3.96 million ARENA grant

Lab360 Solar, a drone-based utility-scale solar PV inspection company formed at University of NSW, has been awarded $3.96 million in support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) Advancing Renewables Program.

According to a statement from ARENA on Friday, the company uses its Daylight Photoluminescence (DPL) imaging technology to inspect solar panels from above in a method “more accurate, cheaper and easier to use than traditional approaches”.

It is able to identify faults and damage, “right down to individual cells” that can be missed by other methods, and was developed during a previous ARENA-funded R&D project.

Lab 360 CEO Thorsten Trupke said the technique resulted via more than two decades of R&D into luminescence imaging at UNSW.

Trupke is also a Professor at UNSW and Deputy Director of the ARC Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence at the university’s School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE.) Trupke previously co-founded panel inspection company BT Imaging in 2007 based on UNSW photoluminescence research.

Of Lab 360, Trupke predicted: “Once rolled out commercially, first in Australia and then globally, it will be central to ensuring that photovoltaic panels are a reliable and sustainable cornerstone of the future energy mix, by enabling better monitoring, early fault detection and long-term performance of solar assets.

“Australia, with its world-leading adoption of solar power and its ambitious trajectory towards net zero, is the perfect place to pioneer and commercialise this innovation.”

More information n he project is available here.

Lab 360 was established in March last year, and was awarded a NSW Physical Sciences Fund grant winner in November.

Picture: credit ARENA

Further reading

NSW Physical Sciences Fund grant winners announced