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Robot ou humain ?

Solar farm inspection

Manual inspection (handheld thermal, walking rows) vs Drone thermography

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an500 000 $USManual inspection
Robot · Par an238 750 $USDrone thermography
Délai de retour sur investissementimmediate
Année de basculedéjàBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Charge de travail
Hypothèse

MW of plant inspected per year.

Hypothèse

Hours per day.

Hypothèse

Days per month.

Hypothèse

Months per year.

Personnel
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 47-4011.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Prix
Calculé AeroDeploy (drone inspection company)

Midpoint of $0.008-$0.012 per watt for manual inspection = $10,000 per MW (drone company's figures).

Calculé AeroDeploy (drone inspection company)

Midpoint of $0.003-$0.006 per watt for drone inspection = $4,500 per MW (same source). A French operator publishes €150-€400 per MWp, far lower.

Robot
Hypothèse

Share needing a person on site anyway (string-level electrical tests).

Hypothèse

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finances
Hypothèse

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Hypothèse

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Hypothèse

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (MW)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Manual inspection Référence 41 667 $US500 000 $US10 000 $US— — — —
Robot Drone thermography 19 896 $US238 750 $US4 775 $US— immediate — 1 142 327 $US

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Drone thermography5-year NPV vs baseline: Drone thermographyWorkloadlow value: 5 → 114 233 $UShigh value: 500 → 11 423 266 $USDrone thermographylow value: 300 → 1 989 695 $UShigh value: 6000 → 839 695 $USManual inspectionlow value: 8000 → 732 282 $UShigh value: 12000 → 1 552 371 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0 → 1 202 449 $UShigh value: 0.2 → 961 959 $USFinancing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → 1 229 813 $UShigh value: 0.12 → 1 038 545 $USWage growth per yearlow value: 0.0236 → 1 110 142 $UShigh value: 0.0636 → 1 175 745 $US1 142 327 $US0low valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/solar-farm-inspection/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/solar-farm-inspection/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US2 500 $US5 000 $US7 500 $US10 000 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / MWscenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/solar-farm-inspection/). Modelled est…

Année de bascule: déjà

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
Less walking among live DC strings in the heat.
Qualité
Full-coverage thermal maps to IEC 62446-3 are hard to match on foot.
Flexibilité
Technicians fix connectors as they go.
Edge cases
Irradiance has to be high enough for useful thermal images: weather dictates the schedule.
Customer experience
Asset owners get comparable reports year on year.
Jobs and redeployment
O&M crews spend more time fixing, less finding.
Réglementation
Drone rules near substations and airports.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  1. Drone inspection cost vs traditional methods: tower climb $800-$1,500 vs drone $350-$600; roof ladder $300-$800 vs drone $150-$400; solar manual $0.008-$0.012/W vs drone $0.003-$0.006/W AeroDeploy (drone inspection company), 2026 · vendor
  2. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  3. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  4. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  5. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  6. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  7. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  8. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  9. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  10. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  11. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  12. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013