LIRNet: A Lightweight Inception Residual Convolutional Network for Solar Panel Defect Classification

Shih-Hsiung Lee (), Ling-Cheng Yan and Chu-Sing Yang
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Shih-Hsiung Lee: Department of Intelligent Commerce, National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung 824, Taiwan
Ling-Cheng Yan: Institute of Computer and Communication Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Chu-Sing Yang: Institute of Computer and Communication Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 5, 1-12

Abstract: Solar-cell panels use sunlight as a source of energy to generate electricity. However, the performances of solar panels decline when they degrade, owing to defects. Some common defects in solar-cell panels include hot spots, cracking, and dust. Hence, it is important to efficiently detect defects in solar-cell panels and repair them. In this study, we propose a lightweight inception residual convolutional network (LIRNet) to detect defects in solar-cell panels. LIRNet is a neural network model that utilizes deep learning techniques. To achieve high model performance on solar panels, including high fault detection accuracy and processing speed, LIRNet draws on hierarchical learning, which is a two-phase solar-panel-defect classification method. The first phase is the data-preprocessing stage. We use the K-means clustering algorithm to refine the dataset. The second phase is the training of the model. We designed a powerful and lightweight neural network model to enhance accuracy and speed up the training time. In the experiment, LIRNet improved the accuracy by approximately 8% and performed ten times faster than EfficientNet.

Keywords: solar panel defect detection; deep learning; neural network; hierarchical image classification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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