Aerial Tools Aps

We develop hardware and software for aerial inspections of large solar infrastructure. 

Problem: Over the last 4 years, the share of solar in the energy mix has increased 200% and will be 4 times greater by 2030. To meet this growing demand, solar parks are becoming larger, making inspections time consuming. Precisely locating a single broken panel is a real challenge and with thousand of new panels added yearly, inspection costs keep rising.  

Solution: We’ve developed a drone-based inspection platform that can cover an area 50 times faster than our competitors and uses precise GPS positioning to allocate problematic modules in no time. This huge improvement in speed reduces operational costs by up to 60%.

How it works: Aerial Tools offers an End-to-end inspection service. Our service begins with drone inspections which are completely autonomous. We take care of regulation and we make sure to follow solar standards. During the inspection, our in-house drone captures high-resolution digital and thermal images. Then, our software automatically detects anomalies using machine learning and we create a digital twin of the park. On our website, operators can access the inspection reports and interact with the results to simplify plant management.

Bussines Model: We are a B2B service provider. We perform the inspection, collect the thermal and digitalimages and provide a report presenting the anomalies detected on the solar panels. The customer can access a dashboard with main park features, historical data, a digital twin of the park and maintenance recommendations on our website. The current business model is
chosen after several customer interviews as the easiest and fastest way to market.

Our service price varies between 80 and 200 €/MW depending on site characteristics and outcome. Basically, the price is linked to the purchased area to be inspected (price is cheaper for more MW), number of inspections (larger amount will reduce the price), if the customer onlyrequires a report or access to the web portal, which will be slightly more expensive, and if there are other requirements like connectivity to ground sensors, for instance

Customers: We have signed two commercial agreements with EDP and Uali. We are discussing contracts with Nordic Solar and DNV and collaborating with European Energy. Other companies such as BeGreen, Galp, ESB, Jera and TotalEnergies have shown strong interest in our service.

With this level of efficiency, customers will save 250,000 €/GW/Inspection comparing with other drone inspections. And through early maintenance they can increase 2.7 M€/GW in operating profits, while reducing CO2 emissions.