Together with the DLR spin-off CSP Services, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) received the CSP Technology Innovation Award 2019 for the innovation QFly. The award ceremony took place on July 10th at the "China International CSP Conference and CSPPLAZA Annual Conference" in Suzhou, China. The QFly system has been awarded for the second time. In 2018, the development team already won the SolarPACES Technology Award.
QFly is an airborne quality assessment of solar thermal power plants developed by DLR. The drone of the QFly system autonomously flies over the solar field taking aerial photographs of the solar collectors. It only needs four hours to do this – much faster than it would be the case on a ground check. At the core of the system is an analysis software developed by DLR. It uses the images to calculate the shape accuracy of the mirrors and determines how precisely they are tracking the position of the sun. This enables a trained operator to determine the maintenance requirements of each collector at a glance and to pinpoint any construction or design errors. The technology prize was awarded to DLR for the development and optimization of the QFly system with CSP Services for the commercialization and industrial application in commercial power stations worldwide.
The conference on solar thermal power generation, organized by CSP PLAZA, took place from 10th to 12th July and was visited by 700 CSP experts. The CSPPLAZA Awards were already presented on the first evening. CSP PLAZA awards three prizes to several winners each year. These prizes are the “Demonstration Project Promotion Award”, the “Diversified Market Application Award” and the “CSP Technology Innovation Award”. In addition to DLR and CSP Services, the Spanish company Abengoa and the Australian company Vast Solar also received the CSP Technology Innovation Award.
Further information about the conference: