The Raptor Maps application enables you to review infrared images associated with anomalies identified during a site inspection. The IR image shows a higher temperature for the anomalous area or component compared to adjacent areas or components. This is because defects dissipate solar energy as heat rather than converting it to current.
More serious defects have higher temperature differentials. Many manufacturers consider a temperature differential greater than 20 degrees evidence of a defective module, where the hotter module is defective. Anomalies are not always stable and can vary from one day to the next, depending on the conditions at the time of inspection.
Anomalies showing smaller temperature differentials, especially less than 10 degrees, may not require immediate attention but generally continue to degrade over time.
Common causes of anomalies include:
Installation damage
Local shading
Panel soiling
Nearby vegetation
Panel cracking
Manufacturing defects
Weather events (lightning, hail or wind)
Suboptimal grounding
Module degradation (for example, delamination)
Fuse or connector failure (for strings)
An RGB image can assist in determining the cause of the anomaly. For example, the RGB image confirms vegetation as the cause of this multi-cell anomaly:
The value of a solar inspection is that it provides insight into the impact of anomalies on power production.
Due to solar-site design, some anomalies have bigger impacts than others. A solar site uses silicon solar cells to convert the energy of sunlight into electricity. The power generated is made available to the grid by means of strings, combiners and finally inverters, which feed into the point of interconnection.
When assessing anomaly impacts on power production, it’s important to consider that outages of components such as combiners and inverters result in a greater reduction in power production than anomalies of individual cells.
Anomaly Impact DC
Raptor Maps uses a power factor to take into account that, for example, a string outage will have much greater impact on overall power production than a cell outage. For more information, refer to this page on Calculating Impact from anomalies. Raptor Maps analysis checks for all of the following anomalies: