DJI Drones Transform Desert Renewable Energy Base, Boosting Mega-Station O&M Efficiency by 26×
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DJI’s drone-based inspection system has boosted operations at China’s massive desert solar base by 26×, enabling fast, automated, and highly accurate maintenance across extreme terrain.
DJI’s Enterprise team recently hosted a field event in the Kubuqi Desert, showcasing how drones are being deployed in real-world construction and operations at large-scale renewable energy bases. The site—home to the world’s first 10-gigawatt renewable energy project—faces operational challenges that traditional inspection methods can no longer handle.
At the Ordos North-Central New Energy Base in Inner Mongolia, massive photovoltaic arrays stretch across the dunes. To balance ecological restoration and power generation, solar panels at the site have been installed 1.5 meters off the ground—much higher than the typical 0.8–1 meter—making on-site maintenance significantly more difficult.
Liu Chang from CTG Mengneng’s Innovation and Digitalization Department shared key data from their pilot solar-storage plant:
“With traditional manual inspections, two teams—four people—could check around 1,000 solar panels a day. Now, with autonomous drone inspections, we can inspect around 30,000 panels per day, finishing a full-site inspection in 36 days—a 26× efficiency boost.”
DJI’s system currently achieves a fault-detection accuracy rate above 95%.
Yu Yangyang, DJI’s energy solutions representative, explained that the drones carry dual-mode payloads combining high-resolution visible light cameras with infrared thermal imaging. Abnormal temperature readings on solar panels often indicate overload issues or bypass diode failures. From above, drones can detect these hot spots quickly and accurately—unconstrained by terrain—while also handling routine inspections on collection lines, substations, and more.
During the on-site demonstration, DJI presented the DJI Dock 3, along with Matrice 4TD and Matrice 4T drone systems. Operators can remotely assign tasks via the management platform; drones then launch automatically, capture imagery, identify faults, and return to base to generate reports.
Pan Yu from Huaneng Kubuqi Energy shared how drone photogrammetry aided the construction phase: covering more than 60,000 mu of land, terrain mapping was completed in two weeks—nearly 9× faster than conventional surveying. After commissioning, the site adopted fully automated drone inspection workflows through drone docks.
Industry data from the China Renewable Energy Society shows that major wind-power accidents—tower collapses, fires, critical component failures—have risen in the past three years, with blade failures accounting for 44%. Traditional inspections rely on high-altitude gondolas or long-distance visual checks, posing high safety risks and requiring 1–2 days per turbine, with significant human error.
Yu noted that DJI Docks are now deployed at more than 1,000 renewable energy plants, covering about 50% of China’s new energy sites. In wind-power inspections, drones can scan a turbine’s blades in just 15 minutes, detecting 14 types of defects—including cracks—with over 95% accuracy.
At the Kubuqi Desert site, solar panels help cool the ground, reduce water evaporation, and support vegetation growth beneath the arrays—enabling a circular system of “solar power + grass planting + animal husbandry.” Drones provide long-term quantitative data for desert-control work, supporting assessments of sand-fixing effectiveness, vegetation restoration, and equipment performance. At a 1-GW solar farm spanning 32,000 mu and containing more than 2 million components, traditional full-site manual inspection would take 180 days—and still fail to detect hidden thermal or electrical issues.
Song Tianqi, head of DJI’s Energy Business, said that ongoing technology upgrades are accelerating smart inspection across photovoltaic stations, ensuring safe, intelligent, and reliable operations—even in harsh environments.
DJI’s intelligent drone-inspection system is proving essential for tackling ultra-large-scale sites and difficult terrain, delivering dramatic gains in efficiency and safety.
