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ロボットか人か？

Solar farm inspection

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

Whirrworkによるモデル推計であり、事実ではありません。 方法論 · 予測の検証記録

人 · 年額$500,000Manual inspection
ロボット · 年額$238,750Drone thermography
回収期間immediate
逆転する年すでにBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

アメリカ合衆国 · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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作業量
仮定

MW of plant inspected per year.

仮定

Hours per day.

仮定

Days per month.

仮定

Months per year.

人員
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).

価格
算出値 AeroDeploy (drone inspection company)

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

算出値 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.

ロボット
仮定

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

仮定

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

資金
仮定

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

仮定

Years in the NPV comparison.

仮定

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

仮定

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

仮定

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)

結果

選択肢月額年額Per unit (MW)初期費用回収期間Break-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
人 Manual inspection 比較の基準 $41,667$500,000$10,000— — — —
ロボット Drone thermography $19,896$238,750$4,775— immediate — $1,142,327

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 → $114,233high value: 500 → $11,423,266Drone thermographylow value: 300 → $1,989,695high value: 6000 → $839,695Manual inspectionlow value: 8000 → $732,282high value: 12000 → $1,552,371Work that stays humanlow value: 0 → $1,202,449high value: 0.2 → $961,959Financing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → $1,229,813high value: 0.12 → $1,038,545Wage growth per yearlow value: 0.0236 → $1,110,142high value: 0.0636 → $1,175,745$1,142,3270low 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. Whirrworkによるモデル推計であり、事実ではありません。

Chart単位あたりの人件費 (基本), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (基本), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が速い), 単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が遅い). 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$2,500$5,000$7,500$10,0002026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / MWscenario range単位あたりの人件費 (基本)単位あたりのロボット費用 (基本)単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が速い)単位あたりのロボット費用 (ロボット：進歩が遅い)Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/solar-farm-inspection/). Modelled est…

逆転する年: すでに

What the spreadsheet misses

安全性
Less walking among live DC strings in the heat.
品質
Full-coverage thermal maps to IEC 62446-3 are hard to match on foot.
柔軟性
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.
規制
Drone rules near substations and airports.

関連

このページの出典

注記と出典は英語です。英語版が正式な版です。

  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