Mobile PV Testing Labs Make Solar Modules Easier to Maintain

Solar power installations in India have been growing in double digits for some years now. From just 161 MW in 2010, the country ramped up to 3,744 MW in 2015 and 28,181 MW in 2019*. As more and more panels are installed, more and more maintenance follows. Every solar power plant requires regular maintenance - including preventive maintenance via tests. This has led to the innovation of mobile PV testing labs.


Most solar plants are located in remote areas like the outskirts of villages, or far-flung uninhabited barren lands. There are often no proper paved roads or network connectivity. This is why a company called Mahindra Teqo developed a van which works as a mobile PV testing lab to visit such areas and perform routine checks on different components of solar plants. Here are some of the features of the vehicle:

-       Complete AC and DC section testing capabilities
-       Onboard field-testing team
-       Equipment to test PV modules, circuit boards, inverters, transformers
-       EL (Electroluminescence test) and Flash Test capability
-       Thermal imaging capability - manually as well as by a drone

Mobile labs help to cut costs for solar plant owners. If they didn’t exist, every solar plant would have to have its own on-site lab. Moreover, travelling across a large field of solar panels and testing each individual panel would be quite difficult - not to mention it would take a team several hours or days, depending on the size of the plant. Data would not be collected and analyzed at the same time - it might be collected on one day and then uploaded to a computer on the next - so it would not be a real-time view of what’s happening in the plant.


A mobilepv testing lab helps to detect problems in the solar panels, inverters etc. long before they occur. Data collected by the mobile lab is compared to historical data of that plant. Panels have to pump out maximum power given the limitations of region, sunlight hours, time of the year, humidity, cloudiness, gradient of land, age of panels etc. Data can be compared to other plants in the region. If there is even one tiny potential fault in one panel or inverter, it will be found before it creates larger issues. Typically, there is an element of artificial intelligence here - it is used to compare huge volumes of data which humans cannot. The AI software can assist managers in quick decision making for the plant - what would take weeks can now be done in a day.


Do you work at, or own a renewable energy facility? Surely it requires regular maintenance, especially preventive maintenance. This will help to detect and resolve any potential future issues long before they take palace. It’s very easy to get your facility tested by a mobile pv testing lab. A provider like Mahindra Teqo or others will be readily available to help you out.

*Source: https://mnre.gov.in/img/documents/uploads/0ce0bba7b9f24b32aed4d89265d6b067.pdf

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