The photovoltaic industry has been experiencing great sustained growth in recent years, making the sector a protagonist when it comes to achieving the objectives defined at an economic, social and territorial level established both at a national and European level. For all these reasons, the need arises to address new research and innovations that allow continuing to increase the competitiveness of the sector and, therefore, the economic, social and territorial benefits that this sector has shown to contribute to our society.

To do this, based on the needs and challenges established at the national and European level, as well as compliance with the transition objectives set by the European Union in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and at the national level, it seeks to optimize through the use of technology disruptive that seek to optimize electricity production in large electricity generation plants, based on photovoltaic technology.

Indaga Solar proposes an industrial research project to digitize and transform the operating processes currently carried out in the photovoltaic industry. For this, the investigation and analysis of various emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 (Digital Twin, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, distributed IoT sensors, artificial vision, energy prediction algorithms, etc.) applicable and integrable in the operation are proposed. of the sector. In this way, new procedures based on these emerging technologies will be obtained, carrying out a technological validation and evaluating in a pilot demonstrator the benefits obtained from the integration of those technologies for which a greater potential for improvement has been identified.

The objective of the project, therefore, is to benefit the Spanish photovoltaic sector by sharing the progress and results obtained by aligning the operations currently carried out with the Industry 4.0 strategy, laying the foundations to obtain higher quality processes, performance and safety than those existing on the market.

The project does not seek a simple digitization of the operation, but pursues through research, the study of technologies, the evaluation of the improvements and the proposed developments, to transform said processes and demonstrate the benefits of using these innovations and technologies. applied to the sector in various dimensions: improving their quality, performance and safety, as well as the environmental footprint derived from the sector's operations.

The main objectives are:

• Improve performance, quality and safety in O&M procedures. Increased competitiveness of the PV sector.
• Promote the digital transformation of the PV sector, contributing to achieving the objectives of energy transition, sustainable development and climate neutrality.
• Intelligent management for decision making applied to O&M FV.
• Prediction of the solar resource in the short and long term to improve the operation in PV plants.
• Technological validation, obtaining results and evaluation of the improvements obtained in a real Industry 4.0 production environment.

Development of a modular and interoperable platform, based on cloud computing, which allows optimizing electricity production by improving the Operation and Maintenance of a photovoltaic solar plant. Within the framework of the project, the platform has been designed with the IIoT concept, that is, Industrial Internet of Things, to allow standardization in the data processing modules of the plant and the environment, in order to be able to plan the preventive and corrective maintenance interventions, according to the recommendations that would facilitate a decision support module.

This module makes it possible to exploit the results obtained from the solar resource prediction modules, the intrinsic parameters of the plant (cleanliness sensors, weather station, voltage parameters, voltage, etc.), as well as early detection of panel failures, with in order to recommend to the user the management of incidents, with respect to a criterion of economic performance, linked mainly to the optimization of production, according to the estimate and the market price of the MWh.

From the point of view of the "sensors" such as IoT Agents, this architecture directly affects a strategy based on edge-computing at the low level, that is, providing the most complex sensors with functional intelligence when it comes to interpretation of the data obtained, requiring decision-making at a high level, within the specific module for support, based on actions related to optimization of production (Operation) or Maintenance, in its two main aspects, preventive or corrective .

Comprehensive monitoring of the photovoltaic plant: The design and deployment of a network of IIoT sensors capable of collecting data on both production and operation of photovoltaic systems has been carried out. These sensors have been integrated with data from other additional devices such as weather stations or cleaning sensors. In addition, access to all data from the SCADA system has been achieved. The information collected is reported to the centralized system for treatment.

Detection and classification of failures through artificial vision: Thanks to a thermographic camera and a camera in the visible spectrum (whose images are processed through vision techniques, artificial intelligence and Deep Learning) it is sought to detect various problems even before they occur. These have a direct effect on photovoltaic production: hot spots, dirt accumulation, cell breakage, among others.

Short and long-term solar resource prediction: Through a sky camera located at the ISFOC facilities that allows the analysis of cloud progression, information from the IIoT sensor network and the integration of OpenData portals, the system allows the estimation of meteorological information, key to optimizing the use of solar resources, as well as the management of maintenance operations on the plant itself.

Decision Support System: Centralized software platform that enables data orchestration, interpretation, and visualization along with decision support (DDS) modules based on cloud computing and artificial intelligence. This system seeks to optimize and automate the interventions to be carried out in the plant, as well as the ideal moment of the maintenance processes.

• Real-time monitoring of the information coming from the different elements of a photovoltaic plant thanks to the implementation of IoT
• Successful application of artificial vision methods for the detection of problems on the surface of photovoltaic panels
• Information based on Artificial Intelligence to predict the best date to carry out maintenance tasks
• Dashboard with all the information and possible actions on a web-based platform, accessible from anywhere at any time

Skylife Engineering, through its digitization line, has contributed to the Indaga Solar project its ability to integrate different systems and technologies (IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Vision) in an integrating solution that allows all the information to be unified in a single place. This has been possible thanks to the existence of a multidisciplinary digitization team that can address projects with multiple technologies in an integrated manner.