When looking at the properties from a detected asset, for example a solar panel with a thermal anomaly, you can now see the timeline of that specific asset. This timeline shows you the digital thread of the asset. It's a timeline view across its lifecycle on the SIDEREAL Fuse platform.
In practice, the asset timeline currently shows you the different detections we made on the asset across the different operations.
1️⃣ Detections vs Assets
The Asset Timeline shows you the different detections that we made on a particular physical asset. We currently support four types of detections over three types of assets.
The different detection types are:
Solar Anomalies: these are faults we detect on solar panels, like hotspots and bypassed substrings for example, available in the Solar Inspection Pro or Essential data product.
Panels: these are detections of solar panels, available in the Solar Construction data product.
Structures: these are detections of tracker structures on a solar site, available in the Solar Construction data product.
Poles: These are detections of poles on a solar site, available in the Solar Construction data product.
These detections happen on the following asset types:
Solar site panels
Solar site structures
Solar site poles
2️⃣ Macro vs Micro Level
On a macro level, operations occur on a site at different points in time.
Every operation detects different assets, so on a micro level, we can link the detections that occur on the same physical asset through a digital thread. In the future, we'll be adding more and more information to that thread. Think about problem solving, issue monitoring, etc.
3️⃣ Asset Setup
Of course, we can't just link detections to assets if we don't know where those assets are located. There are several ways to set up your assets.
DXF: If you have an accurate representation of your assets in the form of a DXF, you can upload it as an overlay to create your assets layer. It's very important that all assets of a certain type are located in a single layer in the DXF and that they don't contain any references. This setup will be simplified in the future. For now, we'll assist selected Beta customers with their setup.
Detections: If you don't have a DXF containing your assets, we can also build up your assets from the detections that we make on your operations. When we detect an anomaly on a solar panel that isn't part of your assets dataset for example, we can add it to the dataset. This process gradually builds up your assets.
Solar Construction: When doing a Solar Construction operation, we use artificial intelligence to detect all the assets on your site.
Setting up your assets from a DXF layer has a few advantages over the other methods.
First of all, it makes sure your assets are located exactly where they should be. Since a scan is never perfect, you always have a slight shift in the detections. The shift can range from a centimeter when using RTK or GCPs, up to several meters with regular GPS drones. Accurately locating your assets allows you to also track the accuracy of your construction project.
Secondly, it makes sure you immediately have all your assets set up without the need for a Solar Construction scan.
😎 Digital Twin in Solar ☀️
Construction companies are very familiar with the concept of a digital twin. It's a digital representation of your site through which all useful information is linked. At SIDEREAL, our goal is to fuse together the digital and the physical worlds to provide useful insights. Our vision is to build out the digital twin for the solar industry to gather all information in a single place. Think about resolving issues, marking panel replacements, linking in-the-field measurements, correlating thermal inspection data with insights coming from your monitoring systems, and much much more. The possibilities are endless, and we can't wait to explore them with you!
Thank you.