Camera Systems for Solar Farms: How to Specify and Buy Them Wholesale

The direct answer: one standalone 4G LTE solar camera per critical point

For a utility-scale PV plant, the system that actually works is not wired CCTV but a set of independent 4G LTE solar cameras: each unit carries its own panel (8W or 15W), its own battery (8000mAh to 20000mAh), a microSD card up to 128GB and its own data SIM, so there is no trenching, no UPS, no PoE switch and no WiFi network to stretch across rows of modules. They go on perimeter poles, on the fence line, on inverter stations and in the substation yard; each camera is live in 5 to 10 minutes, records at 1080p–2K behind IP66 protection, and on the AOV models (Always-On Video, continuous recording) it keeps recording around the clock instead of waking only when a PIR sensor picks up a heat source. That is the whole system. The real decision is not brand: it is how many points to cover, with which lens configuration, and with what power budget per point.

The plant generates power, but not for its cameras

Installing solar cameras inside a solar power plant sounds like a contradiction, and the objection comes up in every tender. The answer is engineering, not marketing: the plant's generation lives in the strings and on the DC side of the inverters, not in outlets distributed around the field. To power a surveillance pole two kilometres out along the perimeter you have to run auxiliary services out there — trench, conduit, conductor, protection, earthing and civil works billed by the metre, repeated every time the client wants one more point. On top of that, during construction and during any maintenance outage — exactly the moments of highest theft risk — auxiliary supply may be out of service. A camera with its own panel and battery depends on none of that, and it moves the day the client changes the fence alignment.

What you are actually protecting

In the field, losses rarely come from a sophisticated attacker. They come from copper cable, from loose modules in laydown, from inverters and boards inside cabinets, from vandalism on fence sections far from the guardhouse, and from opportunistic intrusion off rural tracks. At the EPC stage you add contractor control, material deliveries and crew hours. These are events that happen at night, far from the control building, with nobody watching a monitor — so the system has to record on its own and store locally even when the cellular network drops.

The four groups of points you have to cover

Perimeter and fence line

Long, repetitive runs. Cost per point and runtime rule here, not fine detail: what matters is logging the fence crossing, the direction of movement and the time. This is where a single-lens model does all the work, and where it pays to concentrate the savings so the budget stretches to more points.

Inverter stations, transformer skids and substation

High-value assets in a small footprint. These points justify the best configuration in the catalogue — continuous recording, more battery, bigger panel — because shading from the structures, dust and weeks of monsoon or rainy-season cloud punish recharging precisely where you cannot afford to lose video.

Access points, main gate and guardhouse

One location with two different jobs: a wide view of the lane, and usable detail of whoever comes in. This is the case where a dual-lens camera replaces two cameras and two mounts.

Module laydown and the construction front

Temporary positions that move every few weeks. All the value is in an install that takes 5 to 10 minutes and needs no electrical sign-off to relocate.

AOV against PIR: in open field, the difference is the event that never got recorded

PIR reacts to a temperature change inside a short, close cone. On a solar field that fails in three well-known ways. Someone walking slowly and parallel to the sensor never triggers it. An event outside the hot zone — a vehicle stopping on the internal track, somebody working on the fence at a distance — simply never exists in the recording. And video starts half a second after the trigger, so the record begins once the action is already under way. On top of that, metal surfaces and pavement radiating heat at dusk throw false triggers that fill the card with nothing.

AOV solves the problem from the other end: the camera records continuously at low standby power and uses AI scene analysis to decide when to raise quality and when to raise an alert. AOV is an industry-generic term, not a brand — any serious supplier should be able to explain how they implement it. What differs between suppliers is whether the quoted runtime survives continuous recording, and there the buyer's only defence is to request a sample and measure it.

Which model to specify: the 49 AOV SKUs in the catalogue

The catalogue runs to 150 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order, of which 49 are AOV models, grouped into four series. The figures below are exact and are meant to be used to build a bill of materials without guessing:

Three specific part numbers you can quote straight away: SG-C41G-10T66-V1 (2K, 8000mAh, 8W, IP66) for perimeter runs; SG-D42G-10F66-V1 (2K dual lens, 8000mAh, 8W, IP66) for the gate and internal tracks; and SG-D42G-15F66-V1 (2K dual lens, 20000mAh, 15W, IP66) for inverter stations and the substation. Full data sheets for every variant are in the product catalogue.

Assignment point by point

Power budget: when 8W/8000mAh, and when 15W/20000mAh

The working rule is that the battery covers the night and the bad days, and the panel decides whether the battery fills back up. 8W and 8000mAh work well where the pole gets direct sun for most of the day, the latitude is low and night-time events are occasional. Step up to 15W and 20000mAh when the point sits in partial shade from structures or trees, when the site has a long rainy season, when mounting constraints mean the panel cannot face the ideal orientation, or when that particular point simply cannot stop recording. On plants with high soiling — dusty or arid locations — the bigger panel also buys tolerance for a dirty panel between cleaning visits.

On the storage side, microSD up to 128GB covers the local overwrite cycle. If the project calls for longer retention, you solve it with higher-capacity cards on a special order or by uploading the relevant events over the cellular network — not by assuming the card will hold months of footage. That is also why the data plan gets sized with the client instead of being promised on a spec sheet: it depends on how many events are uploaded, and at what quality.

Buying by project: MOQ, margin, OEM and lead times

Whoever is quoting a PV plant usually sells the system as part of a security or O&M package, and needs two things from the supplier: a margin they can defend, and a factory that stands behind the certification. The equipment is built by Shenzhen Leksell, TÜV Rheinland certified in addition to CE, FCC and RoHS, operating since 2012; the Vietnam office is in Ho Chi Minh City.

The sane approach for an integrator is to order 10 units, install them on the pilot plant — perimeter, gate and inverters — and measure real runtime in the worst season before committing the full project. Volume terms and price detail are on the wholesale page, and margin tiers in the dealer programme. Private label is available on every model, including all 49 AOV SKUs, from 100 units: logo, packaging, manual and firmware carrying the distributor's identity.

The factory also builds to specification — higher resolution, a different battery or panel size, more storage, OEM versions — but that is quoted case by case: quantity, price and lead time are confirmed by a person in sales, never by a web page. Write to info@solaguard.net with the number of points, the site location and the retention you need, and the proposal comes back with exact catalogue models.

Specification mistakes you see in tenders

The first is accepting figures the factory cannot deliver. If a spec asks for batteries or storage beyond what the supplier builds in series, somebody is going to sign for something that later gets substituted on site; the honest comparison is made against the number on the product sheet, not against the biggest number in the proposal. The second is buying one configuration for the whole plant: the perimeter does not need what the substation needs, and levelling up makes the project more expensive without improving coverage, while levelling down leaves the most valuable point without video. The third is sizing power from the annual average irradiation instead of the worst month. And the fourth is treating weatherproofing as a tick-box: what matters is the declared rating of the model actually being installed, together with gland sealing and the orientation of the housing relative to the prevailing rain — because in the field, failure comes in through the cable, not through the enclosure.