Accurate and generalizable photovoltaic panel segmentation using deep learning for imbalanced datasets

The widespread adoption of photovoltaic (PV) technology for renewable energy necessitates accurate segmentation of PV panels to estimate installation capacity. However, achieving highly efficient and precise segmentation methods remains a pressing challenge. Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and remote sensing techniques have shown promise in PV segmentation. Nevertheless, real-world scenarios introduce complexities such as diverse sensing platforms, sensors, panel categories, and testing regions. These factors contribute to resolution, size, and foreground-background class imbalances, impeding accurate and generalized PV panel segmentation over large areas. To address these challenges, we propose GenPV, a deep learning model that leverages data distribution analysis and PV panel characteristics to enhance segmentation accuracy and generalization. GenPV employs a multi-scale feature learning approach, utilizing an enhanced feature pyramid network to fuse data features from multiple resolutions, effectively addressing resolution imbalance. Moreover, inductive learning is employed through a multitask approach, facilitating the detection and identification of both small and large-sized PV panels to mitigate size imbalance. To address significant class imbalance in PV panel recognition tasks, we integrate the Focal loss function for effective hard sample mining. Through experimental evaluation conducted in Heilbronn, Germany, our proposed method demonstrates superior performance compared to state-of-the-art approaches in PV panel segmentation. The results exhibit progressively higher accuracy and improved generalization capability. These findings highlight the potential of our method to serve as an advanced and practical tool for PV segmentation in the renewable energy field. •Analysis of the imbalance problems in real-world PV semantic segmentation scenarios.•Creation of an open-source PV panel dataset to advance renewable energy development.•Introducing a novel end-to-end DL model named GenPV for PV panel segmentation.•Improved accuracy and generalization in PV segmentation across unaligned datasets.