Beneath the Panels - #4 Built to Last: Monitoring and Maintaining Civil Assets of Solar Farms
Solar farms are long-term infrastructure investments, often planned to operate for 25 years or more. While the shiny panels and smart inverters get much of the attention, the underlying civil and structural works—the roads, foundations, drains, and trenches—form the skeleton of the farm. These assets face the wrath of weather, the pressure of operational stress, and the passage of time. For a solar farm to continue functioning efficiently and safely, proactive monitoring and robust maintenance of its civil elements is non-negotiable. This article explores how asset integrity is preserved beneath the panels, and what systems, strategies, and technologies are helping the solar sector build for longevity.
The Silent Workers: Civil Assets in Solar Farms
Unlike the visible and dynamic PV modules, civil components of solar farms are passive and buried—but they are no less critical. Site roads facilitate construction, operations, and emergency response. Foundations support racking systems and panels through windstorms, seismic events, and settlement cycles. Trenches and duct banks house the vital electrical conduits. Surface and subsurface drainage systems manage stormwater and prevent erosion. When any of these elements fail, the consequences ripple through generation performance, safety, and long-term cost.
Over time, even well-constructed assets deteriorate. Concrete may crack from freeze-thaw cycles or sulfate attack. Road surfaces rut under repeated loading. Erosion may expose cable trenches, and improperly maintained drains could flood inverter pads. Each of these issues can reduce system availability or pose safety hazards. Thus, longevity is engineered not just by design, but also by deliberate monitoring and timely maintenance.
Foundation Health Monitoring: Settling the Issue
Foundations, especially pile-driven ones, can face differential settlement, corrosion, and mechanical fatigue over years of service. In clayey or expansive soils, seasonal moisture variation can cause uplift or sinking. Monitoring methods today include:
Survey-Based Monitoring: Periodic total station or drone-based surveys detect misalignment or tilt over time.
Embedded Sensors: Load cells or strain gauges embedded in select foundations can track stress variations.
Corrosion Probes: These are used to monitor the degradation of galvanized or coated piles in corrosive soils.
In areas of known geotechnical sensitivity, installing inclinometers or settlement plates during construction allows better long-term performance tracking. Any deviation from expected settlement rates can be flagged for investigation before it causes racking distortion or torque tube misalignment.
Drainage and Hydrological Systems: Keeping the Site Dry and Safe
Stormwater runoff is a persistent threat to solar farms. Over time, clogged culverts, silted swales, or collapsed drains can lead to waterlogging, which degrades foundations, erodes embankments, and damages access roads.
Routine Inspections: After every significant rainfall event, and at least quarterly, civil teams typically inspect swales, check dam outflows, and culvert entries for sediment buildup or blockage.
Drones and LiDAR: High-resolution elevation maps created using drones help detect ponding or changed flow paths early.
Hydrological Maintenance Plans: Well-designed sites have maintenance protocols that include desilting intervals, vegetation management for swales, and periodic relining of drainage channels.
Failure to maintain these elements can lead to regulatory penalties for runoff violations and expensive retrofit solutions like retroactive slope stabilization or retention ponds.
Roads and Access Tracks: Ruts, Dust, and the Long Haul
Access roads and perimeter tracks endure repetitive stress from construction vehicles, maintenance crews, and sometimes livestock or wildlife. Over time, these roads may develop surface erosion, potholes, rutting, and dust pollution.
Surface Treatment Choices: Use of geocells, compacted gravel, or chemical stabilizers during construction plays a role in maintenance needs down the line.
Monitoring via Drone Imagery: Consistent aerial imaging lets civil teams compare condition changes over time, prioritize repairs, and prevent sudden failure.
Dust Suppression: In arid climates, roads are periodically treated with dust suppressants (often biodegradable polymers or emulsions) to protect both worker health and panel cleanliness.
In remote sites, roads are also critical during emergency events like wildfires or flooding. Their condition directly affects response time and operational risk.
Trenches, Duct Banks, and Cable Protection: Avoiding Exposure
Many of the power-carrying cables in solar farms are buried in trenches and ducts. These trenches, especially if improperly compacted or exposed to erosion, can settle or collapse over time—compromising insulation and thermal performance.
Thermal Monitoring: In high-load or hot climates, thermal resistivity of backfill is periodically checked to ensure that soil conditions haven’t changed in a way that hampers cable cooling.
Visual Inspection of Erosion-Prone Zones: Teams often walk trench lines following major storms, looking for exposed warning tape or subsidence indicating backfill loss.
Manhole and Junction Box Maintenance: For ducted networks, manholes must be kept watertight and junction boxes free from moisture ingress. These inspections are tied to electrical preventive maintenance schedules.
Modern monitoring practices integrate these inspections into digital asset management platforms, allowing for geotagged, image-supported condition records that can be linked to repair and budgeting workflows.
Digital Twin and AI-Driven Civil Asset Management
The civil side of solar O&M has traditionally lagged behind the electrical side in digitization. That is changing rapidly with the adoption of Digital Twins—virtual models of physical infrastructure enriched with sensor data, imagery, and predictive analytics.
By integrating drone imagery, LIDAR scans, and weather data, digital twins can simulate how embankments erode, where water will pool after a storm, or how a road will rut under load. Machine learning algorithms can process this data to predict asset degradation trajectories and recommend interventions before failure.
This enables a shift from reactive maintenance (fix when broken) to predictive maintenance, reducing downtime, safety risk, and cost. Some platforms even use generative AI to create visual simulations of future site conditions under current maintenance plans, helping operators make data-informed decisions.
The above image is an example (illustrative) of real-time monitoring of before and after status of a damaged area inside the plant done through drone imagery.
Case in Point: A 100 MW Project in Flood-Prone Bihar
One example comes from a solar farm in Bihar, India, built near a river known for monsoon surges. The project team implemented elevated inverter pads and designed extra-wide drainage swales lined with rock mattresses. Post-monsoon, drone imagery revealed minor erosion near a northern berm. Although the structure was not compromised, maintenance crews reinforced it preemptively, averting a more serious issue the following season.
The same site used an asset monitoring dashboard that logged each inspection, auto-scheduled fieldwork based on drone heatmaps, and issued repair tickets to contractors. The system allowed for just-in-time gravel top-ups on roads and preemptive clearing of silting swales.
The lesson is clear: smart maintenance extends asset life and avoids the much higher cost of retrofits and disruptions.
The Economics of Longevity: Cost of Prevention vs. Cost of Repair
Preventive civil maintenance costs 5-10% of total O&M annually but can prevent failures that could cost 10x more to repair—particularly if such failures interrupt generation. Civil failures also carry reputational and environmental risk: a flooded inverter or eroded embankment visible from a highway can draw scrutiny from regulators, neighbors, and media alike.
Developers are increasingly factoring long-term O&M planning into early design stages—choosing low-maintenance materials, over-designing for hydrological variability, and investing in better construction quality. This "design-for-durability" mindset is essential for achieving true lifecycle ROI from solar projects.
Conclusion
“Sustainability Starts Below the Surface.” Monitoring and maintaining civil infrastructure isn’t glamorous, but it is essential. Beneath the panels lie the systems that enable access, safety, power flow, and site resilience. From roads to foundations, drains to ducts, each element demands its own strategy, tools, and data.
As solar power scales globally and moves into more extreme terrains and climates, civil durability will become a defining factor in project viability. With smarter tools, predictive analytics, and an ecosystem-wide shift toward sustainable O&M, the future of civil asset maintenance looks not just durable—but intelligent.
Coming Up Next
In the next and last edition of our Beneath the Panels, we’ll explore:
“Water, Wind & Movement: How Natural Forces Shape Civil Design in Solar Farms”
Get ready for an in-depth look at how hydrology, wind loads, and seismic activity influence everything from grading to drainage to structural choices.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes and reflects current research and industry best practices as of the date of publication. It does not constitute professional engineering or financial advice. Project-specific assessments are recommended for actionable insights.
References
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Di Lorenzo, G., Araneo, R., Mitolo, M., Niccolai, A., & Grimaccia, F. (2020). Review of O&M practices in PV plants: Failures, solutions, remote control, and monitoring tools. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 10(4), 914-926.
Kumar, N. M., Sudhakar, K., Samykano, M., & Jayaseelan, V. (2018). On the technologies empowering drones for intelligent monitoring of solar photovoltaic power plants. Procedia computer science, 133, 585-593.
Ejgar, M., Momin, B., & Ganu, T. (2017, October). Intelligent monitoring and maintenance of solar plants using real-time data analysis. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics-Asia (ICCE-Asia) (pp. 133-138). IEEE.
Enbar, N., Weng, D., & Klise, G. T. (2016). Budgeting for Solar PV Plant Operations & Maintenance: Practices and Pricing (No. SAND-2016-0649R). Sandia National Lab.(SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States).
About Arbutus Consultants
Arbutus Consultants is a leading technical advisory and engineering services firm operating at the intersection of clean energy, sustainability, and infrastructure development. With a legacy of over two decades, we have supported the development, financing, design, and optimization of more than 35 GW of renewable energy projects across 22 countries.
Our multidisciplinary team brings specialized expertise across the project lifecycle—including civil and structural engineering, geotechnical analysis, hydrology and drainage planning, and foundation design for renewable energy infrastructure. Through our July technical series “Beneath the Panels,” we will be showcasing how thoughtful design of site preparation, pile foundations, power trenches, and stormwater systems can significantly enhance project performance and resilience.
In addition to our core capabilities in energy yield assessments (EYA), climate risk evaluations (CRA), grid integration, battery energy storage systems (BESS), and technical due diligence, Arbutus remains committed to delivering civil and infrastructure solutions that are technically sound, climate-adaptive, and financially robust.
As the energy transition accelerates, we continue to partner with forward-thinking clients worldwide to build a net-zero future—project by project, terrain by terrain.
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