China installs more renewable capacity every year than US and EU combined. In 2023, China’s installed capacity of renewable energy exceeded 1.45 billion kilowatts, accounting for more than 50 percent of the country’s total installed power generation capacity. Maximizing the utilization of those renewable asset and improving energy production efficiency are top priorities for the asset owners, and critical for harvesting the full carbon mitigation power of the renewables.
Skysys has developed proprietary hardware and software for the renewable energy segment that include:
• Mobile drone stations that efficiently charge drones via contact charging
• Visual + IR image analysis for solar panel inspection
• World’s first non-stop wind blade inspection
More innovation is on the way. Later this year, Skysys will introduce ‘Lantern’, the world’s lightest solar panel cleaning robot that can be drone-airlifted to any solar panel for spot-cleaning. This round of financing will be used for the production and development of Lantern solar panel cleaning robots. The plan is to further develop the autonomous solar panel cleaning robots to fly and operate reliably on 45-degree panel inclines.
CM Venture is proud to have seeded Skysys based on – literally – a napkin drawing of the company’s vision by the company’s co-founder and CEO, Wang Haibin. Haibin worked for many years at GE before founding the company, while GE is an LP of our fund that invested in Skysys.
From low-altitude intelligent/autonomous inspection, to low-altitude intelligent/autonomous operations & maintenance, Skysys solutions close the loop and completes ‘the last mile’ gap in PV power generation operations. In the meantime, Skysys wind turbine power inspection product ‘Yufeng’ will also be actively promoted/marketed to deliver full service, after two years of product application and testing.
Since 2017, Skysys has been instrumental in driving intelligent, autonomous drone applications in energy and security fields. The first commercialized drone hangar and the first drone hangar exported to overseas markets were created and made by Skysys in China. Since Skysys’ on-site drone hangars resolve the issue of limited drone flight times, they took the lead in 2018 to deploy drone hangars across the nation to conduct inspections of large photovoltaic power farms. Over the years, Skysys gradually built up a professional dataset and diagnostic model set for drone PV inspections. After six years of development, Skysys’s PV system ‘Yuguang’ is estimated to have globally overseen 8.3GW worth of PV energy, or 427 PV power stations. Through accumulation of drone data, and PV inspection insights, Skysys has formed industry-leading strengths to support full life-cycle diagnosis/maintenance of solar power stations.
In 2021, inspection data revealed that PV power generation issues were often related to dirt, dust and stains on solar panels. Effective cleaning solutions for acres of solar panels were costly, inefficient, or simply out of reach. Skysys decided to use its drone expertise to solve the global challenge. After two years of development, Skysys launched Lantern, the world’s first PV maintenance product/service integrating drones and cleaning robots, able to cross mountains and buildings, deserts and beaches, to help restore/raise photovoltaic power generation efficiency from 8%-30%.
Skysys’ wind turbine inspection system ‘Yufeng’ supports three modes: autonomous operation, stationary wind turbine service, and active wind turbine service. The system is now in service with numerous wind turbine power generation stations. In 2024, Skysys will start franchise cooperations with wind power operation & maintenance service providers, to deliver an extensive nationwide cooperation network offering Product-as-a-Service and service profit-sharing.
Wang Haibin, Chairman of Skysys, says, “Skysys continues to focus on using AI-driven autonomous drones and robots to achieve the closed loop of clean energy inspections, operations and maintenance, and improve energy generation efficiency. With the support of the national 30-60 dual-carbon plan, this will help elevate new/clean energy sources, such as PV and wind power, to replace traditional/fossil energy sources. As global computing power demand soars, a greater need for energy resources will be required, and more new/clean energy power stations will be needed. In some regions, power shortage risks will exist. Rather than build new power stations, a more economical and efficient method is to improve/maintain the efficiency of energy generation in existing power stations. This is where Skysys’ products and services step in and shine.”
