Boosting Solar Panel Reliability: An Attention-Enhanced Deep Learning Model for Anomaly Detection

Photovoltaic systems (PV) are increasingly recognized as fundamental to the worldwide adoption of renewable energy technologies. Nonetheless, the efficiency and longevity of solar panels can be compromised by various anomalies, ranging from physical defects to environmental impacts. Early and accurate detection of these anomalies is crucial for maintaining optimal performance and preventing significant energy losses. This study presents SolarAttnNet, a novel convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with integrated channel and spatial attention mechanisms for solar panel anomaly detection. The proposed model addresses the critical need for automated detection systems, which are crucial for maintaining energy production efficiency and optimizing maintenance. This approach leverages attention mechanisms that emphasize the most relevant features within thermal and visual imagery, improving detection accuracy across multiple anomaly types. SolarAttnNet is evaluated on three distinct solar panel datasets, demonstrating its effectiveness through comprehensive ablation studies that isolate the contribution of each architectural component. Experimental results show that SolarAttnNet achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods, with accuracy improvements of 3.9% on the PV Systems-AD dataset (94.2% vs. 90.3%), 3.6% on the InfraredSolarModules dataset (92.1% vs. 88.5%), and 3.5% on the RoboflowAnomalies dataset (89.7% vs. 86.2%) compared to baseline ResNet-50. For challenging subtle anomalies like cell cracks and PID, the proposed model demonstrates even more significant improvements with F1-score gains of 4.8% and 5.4%, respectively. Ablation studies reveal that the channel attention mechanism contributes a 2.6% accuracy improvement while spatial attention adds 2.3% across datasets. This work contributes to advancing automated inspection technologies for renewable energy infrastructure, supporting more efficient maintenance protocols and ultimately enhancing solar energy production.