Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Energy Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Renewable energy sources’ contribution to power generation almost represents a valid alternative to limiting fossil fuel usage and pollution for the future. In the last two decades, many countries have widely invested in alternative energy sources to reduce emissions and politically promote so-called clean energy and we are facing a general transition scenario. Some countries, for example, have witnessed a too-rapid increase in their production rate from RES, especially solar and wind, with the complicity of a general market euphoria and, sometimes, generous public policies.

The quality of the installed components and subsystems has not always been guaranteed, especially because it was produced in a rapid time frame, and often with characteristics below the common standards, optimizing installation costs and underestimating a proper plant life cycle cost analysis. In some occasions, the race to install and meet public incentives has left many solar installations with a general lack of good maintenance strategies. In addition to this, advances in wind turbine blade design and materials and proper asset management actions often allow repowering strategies if advanced performance and control systems are available. Moreover, developing countries are implementing new energy plans for the next years to accelerate this energy transition towards more efficient systems.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have recently received much attention from the industry due to their ability to act as remote sensors for many applications, including 3D-mapping, construction monitoring, and data collection through heterogeneous sensors in general. A broad range of solutions are appearing in the market for different applications and services related to the acquisition of information, for example, in power plants, transmission lines, low-emission buildings or other energy systems and components.

Thus, to further spread the real opportunity offered by technologies and methods related to unmanned technologies in the energy sector, this Special Issue entitled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Energy Applications” was proposed for the international journal Energies, which is an SSCI and SCIE journal (2015 IF = 2.072). This Special Issue mainly covers original research and studies related to the abovementioned topics, including but not limited to drone-based diagnosis methods, advanced O&M with unmanned technologies, predictive and reactive maintenance based on remote data, automatic inspection, and UAV-based control systems. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

I am writing to invite you to submit your original work to this Special Issue. The Special Issue welcomes contributions dealing with all facets of drones as mobile computing platforms in application in the energy sector, mainly related to renewable and traditional plants performance monitoring and control.

Prof. Dr. Grimaccia Francesco
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• UAV-based diagnosis, prognosis and forecasting methods for energy plant control
• Predictive and reactive maintenance based on remote sensors
• In-field diagnostic tools and algorithms
• Components aging mechanisms and defect detection by UAVs
• Reliability and effectiveness of novel algorithms based on multiple aerial sensors
• UAV-based automatic inspection and control for energy systems
• Advanced O&M with unmanned technologies
• Energy assets’ management through UAVs