Tyneside drone firm helps North East council inspect huge site in just 80 minutes

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A NORTH EAST council has utilised a ‘game-changing’ drone to help inspect over 5,000 solar panels at the UK’s first ever low-carbon depot.

Durham County Council tested the innovative ‘drone-in-a-box’ to monitor the 23-acre solar site powering its multi-million pound Morrison Busty depot.

Previously, the process took several days with staff inspecting the site on foot with handheld thermal scanners.

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However, a drone inspection using a DJI M3TD thermal drone took just 80 minutes - helping the council save valuable time and resources.

heliguy's Tom Anderson (L) and Lois Smith flying a droneheliguy's Tom Anderson (L) and Lois Smith flying a drone
heliguy's Tom Anderson (L) and Lois Smith flying a drone

The inspection was carried out by skilled pilots at heliguy. The North Shields-based firm is one of the UK’s leading drone suppliers and training specialists, and a pioneer when it comes to automated drone operations.

Staff launched the drone from inside a DJI Dock 2, which can be based on-site and can instantly send a device airborne on-demand. The technology has been heralded as transformative for everything from security patrols to turbine and pipeline inspections - and can potentially even unearth problems a human may miss.

“Defects that are invisible to the naked eye can present themselves clearly using infrared. In the case of solar panels, this may be due to disconnected lines or faulty panels,” said Alex Williams, Technical Geospatial Specialist at heliguy.

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“Being able to identify these issues with the speed and efficiency of drones can save valuable time, as there is no need for in-person physical inspection.”

Drones from North Shields-based heliguy helped the council inspect Morrison Busty (pictured)Drones from North Shields-based heliguy helped the council inspect Morrison Busty (pictured)
Drones from North Shields-based heliguy helped the council inspect Morrison Busty (pictured)

Morrison Busty reopened as a low-carbon site in 2023 following a £8.3m makeover, as part of the eco-friendly authority’s plans to cut carbon emissions from its operations by 80 per cent by 2030, with the goal of becoming fully carbon neutral by 2050.

The eco-depot includes a solar farm, battery storage facility, private wire distribution network, and an extensive electric vehicle charging system and saves an estimated 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Maintenance is vital so utilising drone-in-a-box technology enables the council to stage more frequent inspections - meaning staff can identify and fix any issues quicker.

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“The solar farm is a vital asset to the Morrison Busty depot, so inspections are vital to ensure it is operating effectively,”Louise Austin, Senior Carbon and Energy Officer at Durham County Council,

“To manually collect data for this field you have to walk down each row of these solar panels and take photographs of what you find. It’s time-intensive, can be inaccessible at certain times of the year, it is easy to miss things, and you don’t get the detail that we’ve seen from the drone.

“The drone allows real-time data collection - which you don’t necessarily get with handheld scanners - and the Dock enables data to be collected when required, all-year round.”

And artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a key role, with the new systems monitored and controlled by a Smart City AI management system to ensure optimal operation of the PV, battery storage and electric vehicle charging systems and the monitoring and recording of system performance data.

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And the drone data can be fed into this AI system to provide deeper insights,

Chris Jones, Principal Programme and Project Manager at Durham County Council, added: “The AI management system is connected to every section of the depot.

“It shows the savings that are being generated against previous years’ data, and as it learns it will start to remember that certain things will happen at certain times of the year, and it can start to make predictions. Nobody has done this before on this type of scale.

“This DJI Dock 2 linked into our current systems could be a game-changer.”

For more information on heliguy, please visit www.heliguy.com

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