Traditional solar field assessments consist of inspecting each panel with handheld thermal imagers to check for defective cells or cables. During this process, personnel have to manually keep track of the locations of anomalies to perform maintenance afterward. Because of the scale of most solar farms, this method of inspecting results in inefficient and imprecise data. 

The integration of drone technology has completely improved the efficiency and accuracy of the inspection process. Thermal cameras, can survey large areas within a solar farm, collecting high-resolution infrared images during just a single flight.