Advanced Classification of Failure-Related Patterns

on Solar Photovoltaic Farms Through Multiview

Photogrammetry Thermal Infrared Sensing by
Drones and Deep Learning
Yahya Zefri Mohammadreza Aghaei * Hicham Hajji
2023 International Conference on Future Energy Solutions (FES) | 979-8-3503-3230-8/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/FES57669.2023.10182940

Photogrammetry-Cartography Department of Ocean Operations and Photogrammetry-Cartography

Department Civil Engineering, Norwegian Department
School of Geomatics and Surveying University of Science and Technology School of Geomatics and Surveying
Engineering, IAV Hassan II (NTNU), 6009, Alesund, Norway Engineering, IAV Hassan II
Rabat, Morocco Department of Sustainable Systems Rabat, Morocco
y.zefri@iav.ac.ma Engineering (INATECH), University of h.hajji@iav.ac.ma
Freiburg, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
mohammadreza.aghaei@ntnu.no

Ghassane Aniba Imane Sebari

Mohammadia School of Engineers Photogrammetry-Cartography
Mohammed V University in Rabat Department
Rabat, Morocco School of Geomatics and Surveying
ghassane@emi.ac.ma Engineering, IAV Hassan II
Rabat, Morocco
i.sebari@iav.ac.ma

Abstract— Here, we propose an approach that relies on
digital photogrammetry and deep learning to classify thermal
infrared patterns sheltering potential failures within solar
panels from aerial imagery collected by drones. We collect
images from a solar plant using a rotary-wing drone equipped
with an onboard thermal camera. The captured images are
processed using a photogrammetric pipeline that stitches the
images together producing a georeferenced thermal
orthomosaic. The solar panels are digitized, extracted from the
orthomosaic, labeled into 4 classes, augmented using
transformations acting on their geometry and radiometry then
utilized to constitute a dataset to train from scratch and validate
a developed deep learning classifier. The latter consists of a
convolutional neural network architecture comprising two core
blocks: (1) a convolutional block that produces multi-level
feature maps from the images, followed by (2) a multi-layer
perceptron block that classifies the constructed feature maps
according to the considered categories. The final developed
model scores an F1-score of 98.2% on our validation sub-
dataset, which confirms both its high performance and
generalizability on additional data. The proposed approach
elaborates an efficient, comprehensive and cost-effective
framework to monitor solar farms through the use of drone-
based thermal sensing, photogrammetry and deep learning,
alongside addressing the drawbacks related to the use of classic
techniques.
Keywords— Inspection; Solar farm; Deep learning; Drone;
Thermal sensing; failure
I. INTRODUCTION
During their operating lifetime, solar photovoltaic (PV)
panels are affected by multiple failures because they are made
up of many assembled components, such as toughened glass,
aluminum framing, ethylene vinyl acetate encapsulation,
wiring, and other manufacturing materials [1], [2]. These
components are subject to being damaged or degraded over
time due to environmental factors, such as extreme ambient
temperatures, the intrusion of moisture, diverse precipitation
types, and the UV sun radiation [3], [4]. Across the literature,
the reported degradation rates vary differently, depending on
the panels’ location, along with the dominant degradation
factors [5]–[8]. In [5], the reported rates range from −0.8% to
−4.9% per year. The affected PV panels have degraded
performance, because their individual components cease to
function properly; as a consequence, the overall performance
is reduced. PV panels are arranged within arrays of multiple
layouts. When only one panel is degraded due to the presence
of either one or multiple failures, the whole PV array is
affected, because the output of the array is only as strong as
its weakest component. If one panel is not performing
optimally, the entire array will be penalized [9], [10]. This is
why it is important to monitor PV panels and detect failures
early to perform timely maintenance interventions [1], [11].
Digital imagery, based especially on the thermal infrared
spectrum, has proven itself as an efficient and reliable way to
diagnose PV panels. Panels with failures tend to overheat at
the affected parts, which makes from the long-wave thermal
infrared spectrum ([8 − 14𝜇𝑚]) a suitable way to spot any
unusual excessive temperature patterns [11], [12]. Parallelly,
the use of drones in monitoring is becoming increasingly
popular in a variety of industries [13]–[16], among which the
energy industry occupies a prominent place [17]–[19]. For PV
inspection, drones can be used to inspect hard-to-reach PV
arrays; they can also provide a time-saving and cost-effective
way to overfly large-scale farms collecting images using
lightweight cameras [20]–[22]. After image collection, failure
detection can be carried out by analyzing the images, for color,
texture or shape changes that are likely to shelter failures.
Various works have been conducted on the use of aerial
thermal sensing for failure detection on solar PV panels. In
[23], the authors performed a flight campaign of a utility-scale
PV solar farm through aerial thermography. Post-flight image
analysis has been carried out to spot PV panels having failures.

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The use of aerial imagery was concluded to provide faster
results; however, the study did not propose any automatic
approach nor models for failure detection on images. The
panels were browsed manually by an operator in search of
overheating components. In [24], the authors proposed a
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that classifies aerial
captures into images containing one or multiple panels having
failures, and images with entirely normal panels. The
collected dataset comprised 3336 thermal images, with 811
samples corresponding to the first class (images having no
panel with a failure), on which several augmentations have
been applied to enhance the representativeness. The
developed model scored an F1-score of 75%; however, the
global proposed approach has a major drawback, which is
providing no cues on the location of the affected panels, and
this makes any on-field intervention a difficult task.
In [25], the authors adopted an object detection approach,
where they used a YOLOv5-based architecture to extract PV
panels along with hotspot failures through drawing bounding
boxes around. The dataset they have prepared comprised 5600
aerial images with a total of 124000 modules approximately,
and has been captured from publicly available videos. The
final obtained model achieved a mean average precision of
98.1%; however, the study presents two major drawbacks.
The first is related to the constitution of the dataset, where an
over duplication is observed due to the high overlap between
the captured images. The second relates to the impossibility of
retrieving a PV panel from its source image, since the
geolocalization information has been discarded along the
process of image capturing from the videos. A similar
approach is proposed in [26] (the object detection approach).
After extracting the PV panels, the authors used this time a
Region-based CNN (R-CNN) to extract hotspots from the
images of panels. The approach was developed starting from
a dataset that was collected from six PV farms, with a total
around 9000 panels. The obtained detector scored an accuracy
of 96%; however, while the approach enables to locate PV
panels having failures through the use of orthomosaics, only
hotspots were considered in this study. This makes from the
study not sufficiently extensive, since PV panels are subject to
other failure-related thermal patterns such as pointed heating,
entirely overheated panels and aligned overheating cells.
Another study that relies anew on object detection through an
R-CNN model was presented in [27]. At a first level, the
authors performed an extraction of the PV arrays, then at a
second level, they extracted the hotspots contained within
each array. While the study tackled the geolocalization issue
through relying on the exterior orientation parameters that are
embedded within each captured image, it was tailored
according to a PV farm with a specific and rare panel
arrangement, which calls into question its generalizability to
other farms. In addition, only one failure pattern was
addressed (hotspots), while practically several other pattern
types are found within real-world scenarios.
In [28], the authors proposed an approach where the issue
of locating PV panels on field has been taken into account. For
that, they have generated a panorama of the stitched drone
images based on feature detection and matching, then
performed image segmentation to extract the PV panels. The
latter were fed to a CNN model that was trained and validated
to classify seven thermal failures. While the classifier
achieved an accuracy of 97.52%, the prepared dataset was too
small to be considered as representative. Also, the generated
panorama was deprived from a geographic reference system,
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which makes the use of a GPS/GNSS-based system to
navigate the PV farm in search of panels with failures not
practical.
An analysis of the previous works highlights three main
issues summarized as follows:
• Automatic failure detection: some approaches rely on
eyesight-based examination of the images, which is a
tiring and error-prone process, especially when it
comes to big data collected from large-scale farms.
• The geolocalization issue, which relates to finding a
panel with a failure on-field based on its source aerial
image: while the majority of works have gone into
failure detection on images, the posterior
geolocalization issue has received very little interest.
• The multiplicity of failure-related thermal patterns:
hotspots are the predominant thermal pattern on PV
models [29], which explains the reasons why their
detection has received the major interest in the
literature. However, other failure-related patterns also
exist, and they also have to be addressed to perform a
comprehensive diagnosis of any solar farm.
This work addresses the aforementioned issues through
developing an approach that relies on a deep neural network-
based algorithm for the automatic detection of failure-related
PV thermal patterns. An exhaustive diagnosis is provided
through considering four classes. The approach uses as a
starting point an orthomosaic generated through a
photogrammetry-based stitching process. The latter enables a
uniform imaging of the whole farm, along with making it
possible and straightforward to locate the occurred failures
conveniently on-field for posterior on-site interventions. The
remainder of this work is structured as follows: Section 2
describes the materials and methods used to carry out the
work. Section 3 presents the obtained results that are discussed
in Section 4 prior to a general conclusion with
recommendations.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Aerial image collection
A PV solar farm was selected in order to conduct our on-
field image collection. The site choice was determined by two
criteria. The first is the possibility to conduct an acquisition
mission, following permission from the farm owners. The
second is comprising the highest possible number of panels
with diverse thermal failures so as to construct a representative
dataset for the classifier to develop. A prior flight planning has
been performed following three steps:
• Delimitation of the interest area;
• Determination of the flight height (30m) along with the
overlaps (85% for the end and side laps);
• Generation of the flight lines and saving the project
plan as a KML vector file for on-field use.
Aerial images were collected with a hexa-copter drone
type DJI M210 (Fig. 1). On it, was mounted a thermal infrared
camera type Zenmuse XT2 of focal length 9mm, a pixel pitch
of 17μm and a resolution of 640×512 pixels. The panels were
overflown at early morning to avoid the apparition of sun
reflections with the camera set a nadiral viewing position.
 Fig. 1. The used drone with the onboard camera (DJI Matrice 210).
B. Post-flight image processing
A photogrammetry-based post-flight processing workflow
has been applied to the collected images. It was carried out
using the software Pix4D, and comprises three steps:
• Image matching and parameter calibration: images are
matched by means of the SIFT (Scale-Invariant
Feature Transform) feature extractor-descriptor, based
on which their interior and exterior parameters are
iteratively reoptimized to more accurate values ;
• 3D reconstruction: a 3D point cloud is generated via
dense stereo matching of the calibrated images ;
• Orthomosaic generation: the point cloud-based dense
reconstruction is used to derive a numeric surface
model, based on which an orthomosaic covering the
entire overflown site is produced.
C. Data preparation
From the generated georeferenced orthomosaic, the PV
panels were digitized using a GIS-based tool. The digitization
process eliminates the background details that are likely to
generate false positives. Digitization was done by drawing
polygons on top of the panels that underwent afterwards
element-wise clipping to generate individual panel images.
The clipped panel images were labeled manually by a PV
maintenance expert into four classes depicted in Fig. 2:
Class 0 refers to panels with no failure-related pattern; Class 1
refers to panels having one or multiple hotspots; Class 2
groups modules having a row or a column of overheated cells;
and Class 3 comprises panels that are entirely overheated.
Each obtained image had a resolution of 40x24 pixels. To
enhance the representativeness of each class, the contained
images were augmented using four transformations:
(1) horizontal flipping; (2) vertical flipping; (3) 180° rotation
and (4) median blur. In the next step, the dataset was randomly
shuffled, underwent label one-hot encoding then split into a
percentage of 80% allocated to train the model, and a
percentage of 20% spared for parallel validation. One-hot
encoding converts each category into a binary vector with a
single "1", where each position corresponds to a specific class.
It allows deep learning models, to more effectively process
and learn from categorical data by reducing the impact of
irrelevant numerical relationships between class labels,
thereby enabling more accurate and interpretable predictions.
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Fig. 2. Sample panels corresponding to each labeling class.
D. Model development
To design the model, we have adopted a deep learning
approach. The foremost benefit from using this approach is
having no need for manual feature engineering, as it is the case
for classic machine learning algorithms where the intervention
of an experienced person is required to design hand-crafted
features. Deep learning models also take advantage of large
datasets and improve accordingly, contrary to machine
learning ones whose performance gets saturated [30]. Since
we work on images, we have chosen a Convolutional Neural
Network (CNN) architecture. CNNs have demonstrated high
capabilities in computer vision-related tasks, and were proven
to be highly performant when it comes to tasks such as image
classification, semantic/instance segmentation and object
detection [31]. A typical CNN is made of two parts [33]:
• The first is an alternation of convolution and pooling
operations. Convolution, achieved by applying filters
to the input image, is used to extract distinct and
valuable features, such as edges and textures, that help
the network understand the underlying image patterns.
Pooling is employed to reduce the spatial dimensions
of the feature maps, making the input size smaller and
more manageable. This reduction allows the network
to focus on the most significant features and reduces
computational complexity. Together, convolution and
pooling layers build a hierarchical representation of the
input data, progressively capturing more complex and
abstract features at each level of the network.
• The second is a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network
that is composed of multiple stacked layers of nodes
connected by weighted edges. By design, the MLP has
the ability to figure out relationships between the input
and the output variables that are complex and non-
linear. It maps the extracted feature maps by
convolution and pooling to one of the addressed
classes of interest.
We started with an initial CNN architecture that we
trained/validated and modified iteratively using the prepared
dataset. Training was performed using the Adam (Adaptive
Moment Estimation) variant of gradient descent, with a
learning rate of 0.001, a categorical cross-entropy loss
function, a batch size of 32 and 100 epochs. To evaluate the
model performance, we have chosen the F1-score as a metric.
The latter is calculated as follows: 𝐹1 − 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 = 2𝑃𝑅/(𝑃 +
𝑅), with 𝑃 and 𝑅 the model precision and recall respectively.
The F1 score balances both, providing a single metric taking
into account false positives and false negatives at the same
time.
For every training/validation iteration, the learning curves
(where the loss function along with the F1-score are plotted as
a function of epochs) were inspected in search of underfitting
or overfitting pattern. The complexity and hyperparameters of
the model were adjusted accordingly until obtaining a model
that has been trained under an optimal regime. In underfitting
cases, the model was mainly simplified through removing
fully-connected layers or reducing the number of neurons per
layer; reduction of convolutional/pooling layers and the filters
they contain was also performed. For overfitting cases,
opposite actions were carried out to obtain a less complex
model, along with using L2 regularization that penalizes large
model weights and dropout that randomly drops neurons at a
fixed rate during training.
Data preparation and model development were performed
using the Python programming language and the deep learning
library TensorFlow (V2.8).
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Aerial image collection and post-flight image processing
In total, 325 images have been collected from the PV farm,
which contained polycrystalline panels. A sample image is
illustrated in Fig. 3. Images have a resolution of 640x512
pixels each. At the chosen flight height (30m), a ground
sampling distance (GSD) around 5.6cm/pixel was obtained.
As shown in Fig. 3, the GSD enables spotting the overheating
parts of the panels conveniently. The images also feature
significant radial lens distortions, since a wide-angle camera
has been used, with a focal length of 9mm. The distortions will
be corrected after the photogrammetric post-flight processing.
Fig. 3. A sample collected image from the dataset, featuring radial lens
distortions.
Fig. 4 shows a clipped part from the generated
orthomosaic. The latter suppresses lens distortions and
stitches the images in a way that produces a uniform scene
across the whole site. Various thermal patterns are observed
on the panels, which makes from the orthomosaic a suitable
basis to constitute a representative dataset for the addressed
four-class classification task.
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Fig. 4. A clipped region from the generated thermal orthomosaic,
showcasing various observed thermal patterns related to failures on the
overflown PV farm.
B. Dataset preparation and model development
Table I summarizes the number of the obtained images for
each class after panel extraction, then after image
augmentation. As presented, the final obtained dataset has a
high representativeness regarding all the considered classes.
TABLE I. SUMMARY OF THE PREPARED DATASET
Class Initial dataset Augmented dataset
0 177 885
1 146 730
2 69 345
3 72 360
Total 464 2320
The final adopted model is presented in Fig. 5 and consists
of two blocks:
A convolution/pooling layer block, which contains:
• A 2D convolution layer (Conv2D_1) containing 8
filters of size 3 × 3, implemented with a stride of 1 and
a ''same'' padding, with ReLU activation ;
• A 2 × 2 2D MaxPooling layer (MaxPooling2D_1) ;
• A 2D convolution layer (Conv2D_2) containing 6
filters of size 3 × 3, implemented with a stride of 1 and
a padding of type ''same'', with ReLU activation ;
• A 2 × 2 2D MaxPooling layer (MaxPooling2D_2);
• A 2D convolution layer (Conv2D_3) containing 6
filters of size 3 × 3, implemented with a stride of 1 and
a padding of type ''same'', with ReLU activation ;
• A 2 × 2 MaxPooling 2D layer (MaxPooling2D_3) ;
• A Flatten layer, which transforms the feature elements
extracted by the convolution layers into a single one-
dimensional vector (𝑥1 , 𝑥2 , ⋯ , 𝑥𝑛 ).
A multi-layer perceptron block, which contains:
• A dense layer (Dense_1) of 64 neurons, with ReLU
activation and ridge regression (L2);
• A dropout layer (Dropout_1) with a ratio of 0.5;
• A dense layer (Dense_2) of 64 neurons, with ReLU
activation and ridge regression (L2);
• A dropout layer (Dropout_2) with a ratio of 0.5;
• A dense layer (Dense_3) of 4 neurons, with Softmax
activation, at which the network gives as output the
final predicted class.
Overall, the final adopted model comprised a total of
11092 trainable parameters.

Fig. 5. The final architecture of the adopted model.
Fig. 6 depicts the variation of the loss function as function
of epochs computed on the sub-datasets of training and
validation. The loss function decreases, which indicates that
the optimization process is minimizing the gap between the
initial given labels for the images and the model predictions.
The curves reach a plateau starting from epoch 80
approximately and a convergence is observed around a low
value of 0.11. No particular scheme referring to underfitting
or overfitting is observed. Fig. 7 depicts the progression of the
F1-score. The metric increases and reaches a saturation
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plateau from epoch 70. The curves converge around 98%
without a generalization gap, which confirms that model
learning has been performed within an optimal regime leading
to a high performance metric. The final obtained F1-score
value on the validation dataset was 98.2%.
Fig. 6. Variation of the loss function in function of epochs.
Fig. 7. Variation of the F1-score in function of epochs.
IV. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This study focused on developing a deep learning-oriented
advanced classifier for failure-related patterns on PV panels
through thermal image sensing. The latter shows up to be a
reliable technique to diagnose the panels and spot potential
failures. Aerial imaging facilitates data collection, alongside
sparing time as well as human and material resources in
comparison to conventional imaging procedures.
Thermal images provide insightful information about PV
surfaces; however, compared to RGB images, they lack
spectral information since they feature only one band and have
much lower resolutions, which may compromise image
matching and thus the calibration of their exterior parameters.
In this work we have used very high acquisition overlaps to
enhance image matching and remedy this problem, which has
yielded satisfying results, as shown on the final obtained
orthomosaic (Fig. 4). Additionally, the use of the
photogrammetric approach does not only solve the issue of
finding a PV panel having a failure on-field; it also adds a
geographic coordinate system, which enables the use of a
GPS/GNSS system to navigate the installation on-field.
The use of a CNN to classify images enables to uncover
the patterns underlying each failure class automatically.
Applied to a series of panel images, especially within a large-
scale PV farm will enable a faster and more accurate diagnosis
of panels with less human intervention. The developed model
achieved an F1-score of 98.2%, which we consider
satisfactory for its effective deployment in real-world
maintenance missions. In the meantime, there are several
recommendations that we suggest for future work:
• Constituting a dataset that features other PV panel
types namely monocrystalline and thin-film;
• Extending the classification task to additional classes;
• Developing a classifier that also addresses the
classification of failures that are detectable using the
RGB spectrum.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Research Institute for
Solar Energy and New Energies (IRESEN) in Rabat
(Morocco) [Reference: Green INNO-PROJECT-09-
SmartDrone4PV].
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