Hot spots & cell faults
Cracked cells, solder failures, and shading damage that overheat, degrade neighboring cells, and create fire risk on rooftops.
Risk: accelerated degradation, fire
SolarATL flies radiometric thermal drones over solar farms and commercial rooftops across Georgia and the Southeast — pinpointing hot spots, diode failures, and string outages down to the exact module, so your crew fixes instead of searches.
A panel can pass a visual check and still be bleeding production. Radiometric infrared reads the actual operating temperature of every cell — and heat never lies.
Cracked cells, solder failures, and shading damage that overheat, degrade neighboring cells, and create fire risk on rooftops.
A failed diode knocks out a third of a module and shows a distinct thermal signature — one of the most common warranty-claimable faults we document.
Entire strings running open-circuit read uniformly hot; disconnected ones read cold. We map every one to its row and position.
Potential-induced degradation produces a checkerboard thermal pattern across affected strings — early detection preserves warranty leverage.
Pollen film, bird droppings, and encroaching tree lines — the everyday Southeast production killers, quantified instead of guessed.
After hail or wind events, we deliver same-week thermal + high-res visual documentation formatted for insurance and warranty claims.
This is a sequence — each step feeds the next, and you get deliverables at the end of it, not a software subscription.
Layout review, airspace authorization, and irradiance-window scheduling — thermal flights only happen in conditions that produce valid data (≥600 W/m²).
FAA Part 107 pilots fly calibrated radiometric IR plus high-resolution RGB in a single automated grid — megawatts covered per hour.
Every thermal anomaly is classified by fault type and severity, tied to GPS position and your site's row/module numbering.
IEC 62446-3-aligned PDF plus a site map your O&M crew can walk with: fault, location, severity, recommended action, and estimated recoverable production.
Headquartered in metro Atlanta with rapid mobilization across the region's fastest-growing solar markets.
SolarATL is the dedicated solar-inspection arm of Eyes Above, the aerial imaging team behind construction progress documentation on projects like the Intel One Campus and the Hyundai battery plant in Kingston, GA. Same licensed pilots, same documentation discipline — pointed at photovoltaics.
Pricing depends on system size, site layout, and deliverables. Commercial rooftop inspections typically start in the low four figures; utility-scale farms are priced per MW and drop quickly with scale. Every quote is fixed-price with no software subscription attached — call 404.736.4199 or use the form below for a same-week estimate.
No — the opposite. Thermal inspection requires the system to be operating under load and at least ~600 W/m² of irradiance, so your array keeps producing during the entire flight. There is zero downtime.
A drone covers roughly 10–20 acres of panels per flight hour. Most commercial rooftops are captured in under an hour on site; a 20 MW farm is typically flown in a single day, with the full report delivered within 3–5 business days.
IEC 62446-3 and most O&M best practices recommend annual aerial thermography, plus event-driven inspections after commissioning, hail or major storms, inverter or string replacements, and before warranty expiration dates.
Yes. Reports are aligned with IEC 62446-3, the international standard for outdoor PV thermographic inspection, and include radiometric evidence, GPS-referenced locations, and severity classification — the documentation format module manufacturers and insurers expect.
We're based in metro Atlanta and serve the Southeastern United States: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Multi-site portfolios across the region can be scheduled as a single engagement.