Introduction
Wesii is an innovative start-up founded in 2016, which has become a global leader in drone survey and image processing recognised from the main players in the photovoltaic sector.
Their product is a one-stop solution for photovoltaic power station owners, managers and technicians to give them full control over their assets of renewable energy production.
The main goal of the project was to create an on-field maintenance solution that would ultimately improve energy production.
To do so, we designed a solution to optimise field inspections, allowing technicians to detect and address anomalies faster and more accurately, easily keeping track of all relevant information in order to provide proactive insights for preventive maintenance activities as well.
Additionally, the solution allows managers to remotely monitor the progress of work and allows plant owners to be always updated on the state of their photovoltaic power station.
Another important goal of the product is to empower technicians to run their own inspections instead of requesting and planning an aerial survey with Wesii itself.
This goal was reached by creating a Do-It-Yourself solution that includes a small drone with thermal camera, designed to be easy to use by any technician with specific training.
The most funny and difficult part was to design the interactions for the user to set up the drone, plan the flight, control it while airborne and correctly acquire data. All this data from the drone then needed a seamless process to be uploaded and analysed inside the Web portal to generate tickets to solve eventual anomalies and assign them to technicians.
Ecosystem
The entire ecosystem includes a web portal to monitor data and energy performance by solar plants owners or managers, and a mobile app made to run on smartphones with thermal cameras for technical field inspections.
The solution also includes a drone to run aerial inspections for technicians that work by themselves. It allows to quickly gather and analyse data on the solar plant performance, in order to identify in real time performance issues to be addressed on-field.
The service, in particular, offers profound and valuable analysis service for photovoltaic plant owners. It allows to deliver to all the actors of the ecosystem a series of tools that help to identify defects that may compromise the correct functioning of the panels and classify them, keep assets under constant supervision and take action wherever and whenever needed.
Features
Let’s see what are the main features of the two main component of the service.
The web app
It is designed to be useful to both plant owners and agencies that manage the maintenance of multiple photovoltaic plants.
The web app is always updated and provides information on the anomalies detected, the resolution progress of tickets, shows comparable thermographic aerial images taken in different periods of the year and gives real-time statistics on the status of each plant.
Mobile App
It is the main tool for on-field technicians, and allows them to fully manage maintenance tickets reducing the time required to identify and solve issues.
It informs about the anomalies detected and when a new ticket has been assigned to the user.
In addition, through the GPS of the mobile phone it enables the technician to easily reach the module, while the integrated thermal camera allows to efficiently identify the right component and anomaly to be managed.
This means less time spent working on the field resulting on more tickets managed in the same time, and it also enables the technicians to go on the field already prepared with the necessary equipment to solve the issue.
One of the greatest challenges we faced while designing the Wesii ecosystem has been to get to know and understand the different and non-homogenous work processes used in maintenance tasks, and help reshape them into more streamlined processes without losing information and integrating with current work habits.
All this was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the amazing Wesii team, a group of dynamic people truly open to innovation and deeply expert in the photovoltaic sector.
Their knowledge and vision have been precious throughout the whole project, and allowed us together to create a unique product that improves the life of professionals in the renewable energy field.
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