PVEL and QE-Labs to offer exclusive drone EL inspection services to U.S. solar market

NAPA, Calif., and SINGAPORE, March 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) and Quantified Energy Labs Pte. Ltd. (QE-Labs) today announce that the companies have signed an exclusive agreement to provide drone inspection services in the U.S. solar market. PVEL will be the provider of QE-Labs' autonomous drone electroluminescence (EL) imaging technology for conducting front-end field inspections. The back-end data processing will be handled by QE-Labs in Singapore.

EL imaging is a powerful inspection method that can reveal defects and microcracks of solar cells inside a photovoltaic (PV) module. It is widely used as a tool for quality control in PV manufacturing. For years, PVEL has used a manual daytime EL tester conducting field EL inspection of more than 2GW of underperforming or damaged PV systems. Currently EL imaging is only conducted on a sampling basis due to the speed and cost limitations of manual inspection technologies. With this new agreement, PVEL will expand their field testing services to perform faster inspection of large-scale solar assets.

"We are impressed with QE-Labs' technology, which completed the world's largest EL inspection in Singapore with a much faster and more cost-effective solution than what is available in the market today." said Jenya Meydbray, CEO of PVEL. "By leveraging this proprietary technology, PVEL looks forward to bringing this innovative autonomous drone EL solution to the downstream solar community in the U.S."

The collaboration between QE-Labs and PVEL will provide project developers, asset owners and investors with a comprehensive testing service that will help ensure quality assurance and quality control of solar PV power plants across their 25-year lifecycle.

The drone EL imaging services can assist with:

• Identification and evaluation for insurance and/or warranty claim for damaged and/or underperforming PV modules.
• Technical due diligence prior to PV asset transaction or leasing.
• Initial site-acceptance-testing (SAT) to exclude physically damaged PV modules caused by poor workmanship.
• Detection of early failures before the defect liability period (DLP) ends, including excessive light induced degraded (LID) PV modules.
• Annual PV module quality health checks to closely monitor up to 100% of the PV system.

"With established success in our home market, we are ready to deploy our autonomous drone solution in more regional markets to support the growth of the global PV industry. This collaboration with PVEL is QE-Labs' first step towards global expansion based on our drone-enabled Data-as-a-Service business model," said Dr. WANG Yan, CEO of QE-Labs. "Together with our partners, QE-Labs will establish a global service network for our clients to use the innovative autonomous drone EL inspection at anytime and anywhere. As global PV installations cross the 1-terawatt milestone, we hope these innovative services can help drive further investment in and expansion of solar PV projects worldwide."

PVEL is the leading independent lab for the downstream solar and energy storage market and a member of the Kiwa Group. As a bankability testing pioneer, PVEL has accumulated more than a decade of measured reliability and performance data for PV and storage equipment. Today PVEL provides developers, investors and asset owners with a suite of technical services for mitigating risk, optimizing financing and improving system performance throughout the project lifecycle. PVEL's flagship Product Qualification Programs for PV modules, inverters and energy storage systems connect manufacturers with a global network of 400+ downstream partners representing 30+ gigawatts of annual buying power.

Quantified Energy Labs Pte Ltd (QE-Labs) is a Singapore based deep-tech spinoff company from the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). QE-Labs develops and commercialises aerial solar solutions for the PV industry to support its clients in PV asset lifecycle management, which covers PV system design, construction, commissioning, and O&M phases.

Ashley Fallon, Marketing at PVEL, ashley.fallon@pvel.com 
Dr. WANG Yan, CEO and co-founder of QE-Labs, yan.wang@qe-labs.com

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