Typical IP Camera Resolution for Solar Farms in Thailand: Why 2K Is the Wholesale Default

1080p to 2K is the typical resolution, and 2K is the practical default

For a solar farm in Thailand — or any site with the same combination of heat, monsoon rain, long fence lines and no mains power where the cameras need to go — the typical IP camera resolution in service is 1080p to 2K, and 2K is the sensible default on anything specified today. All 49 always-on solar models in the SolaGuard catalogue record at 2K (2.0MP per sensor), with wholesale prices quoted per order. 4K is available, but only as a custom or OEM build, and on a battery-and-panel camera it rarely earns back the power and storage it consumes. If you are quoting a PV site and someone is pushing 4K at you as the baseline, they are selling a number, not a result.

That matters for importers and distributors because resolution is the first line on every RFQ and the line buyers anchor on hardest. Getting the answer right — and being able to explain it — is usually worth more than winning the megapixel argument.

What the camera actually has to accomplish on a PV site

Surveillance specification gets much easier once you separate the three jobs a camera can do. They need very different things from the optics, and only one of them is genuinely resolution-hungry.

Most of a solar farm is detection and classification work. Rows of panels are low, flat and repetitive; what you are watching for is a human silhouette moving where no human should be, or a vehicle pulling up to a fence line at night. A 2K sensor with a well-chosen field of view handles that comfortably. Identification is the one job where resolution runs out — and the fix is to put a camera close to the gate at head height, not to quadruple the pixel count on a pole 40 rows away.

This is also why 4K requests so often come back down to 2K after the first site survey. A buyer imagines one very high-resolution camera covering the whole array. In practice the panel rows occlude each other, and coverage comes from camera count and placement.

Why megapixels are the wrong first question on an off-grid site

A solar security camera is a closed energy system: the panel harvests, the battery buffers, and everything the camera does — sensing, encoding, storing, transmitting over 4G — spends from that budget. Higher resolution raises the cost of every one of those steps simultaneously. More pixels means a bigger bitstream, which means the microSD card cycles faster and the LTE radio stays awake longer, which is usually the largest single power draw in the whole device.

The SolaGuard AOV range is built around two power classes, and choosing between them is a far more consequential decision than resolution:

• 8000mAh battery with an 8W panel — the volume configuration, suited to sites with good unobstructed sun and moderate event traffic.
• 20000mAh battery with a 15W panel — the specification for sites that see real monsoon cloud cover, heavy shading, or high nightly activity that keeps the camera recording and uploading.

In Thailand the wet season is the design constraint, not the dry season. A camera sized for a clear March afternoon and installed for a July week of overcast rain is the most common field failure in the category, and it has nothing to do with the sensor.

Storage sits on the same budget. All models take microSD up to 128GB. Higher-capacity cards exist in the market generally, but specify against what the camera can actually address rather than what a datasheet elsewhere advertises — retention should come from sensible recording settings and card size together, not from an assumption the hardware cannot support.

AOV versus PIR changes what you capture more than resolution does

AOV — Always-On Video — is an industry-generic term, not a proprietary one. It means the camera records continuously at low standby power, using AI scene analysis to decide what deserves full attention, rather than sleeping until a PIR motion sensor wakes it.

On a solar farm the difference is material. PIR-triggered cameras are thermal-differential devices: they respond to a warm body crossing the sensor zone at a reasonable speed. They miss the slow approach, they miss events at the edge of or outside the configured zone, and they miss the first seconds of an incident while the sensor wakes the encoder — which is often the only part worth having. A technician quietly walking a row, or someone working a cable run at the far side of the frame, is exactly the event a PIR camera will not give you.

A 1080p AOV camera that recorded the whole event beats a higher-resolution PIR camera that woke up for the last two seconds. When a buyer asks about resolution, this is the trade that is usually hiding behind the question.

Lens count is the lever that actually extends coverage

For long, linear sites, adding sensors buys more useful coverage than adding pixels to a single sensor. The AOV catalogue is built on that principle across four series, all 2K, all IP66:

A practical three-tier bill of materials for a PV site looks like this. Gate and access points take a dual-lens unit such as the SG-D42G-10F66-V1, where one sensor holds a wide approach view and the other a tighter framing. Exposed perimeter corners, where sun is inconsistent and activity is highest, take the high-capacity SG-D42G-15F66-V1. Interior row coverage and inverter pads — lower risk, lower event count — take the single-lens SG-C41G-10T66-V1. Mixing tiers rather than quoting one model across the whole site is what keeps a bid competitive without underspecifying the points that matter. Full specifications for all of them are on the product catalogue, which runs to 150 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order.

Specifying and sourcing for a Thailand-bound project

Climate first. Outdoor models are IP66, which is the rating to hold the line on for tropical installations — driving rain and sustained humidity are the realistic threats, and the enclosure and gasket quality behind the rating matter as much as the rating itself. Shenzhen Leksell has manufactured since 2012 and holds TÜV Rheinland certification alongside CE, FCC and RoHS, which is the documentation package your customs broker and your end client's insurer will both eventually ask for.

Installation runs 5 to 10 minutes per camera. On a solar farm that is not a convenience detail — it is the difference between a two-day commissioning crew and a one-morning job, and on a multi-hundred-camera site the labour line moves more than the hardware line.

Commercial terms for distributors and importers:

• MOQ — 10 units for a trial order, 100 for OEM or ODM work.
• Margins — 20% from around 10 units, 30% from around 50. Details on the dealer programme.
• Lead times — samples 7 to 10 days by air; bulk production 25 to 40 days by sea. Stock held at the Ho Chi Minh City office ships within Vietnam in 7 to 10 business days.
• OEM and private label — available on every model, including all 49 AOV units. For distributors building a branded line for regional solar EPC contractors, this is usually the point of the exercise.

One sourcing note worth being direct about: there is no Bangkok stocking point. Thailand-bound orders ship from the factory, so build the sea freight window into any project timeline rather than assuming regional stock. For sample evaluation ahead of a tender, air freight on a 10-unit trial is the route that fits most bid calendars.

The five questions to put to any supplier

Before you compare prices, make every quoted supplier answer these in writing. They separate a real product from a datasheet.

1. Is the recording genuinely always-on, or PIR-triggered? Ask for the standby power behaviour, not the marketing term.
2. What is the battery and panel pairing, and was it sized against wet-season irradiance or clear-sky?
3. What is the maximum microSD capacity the camera actually addresses?
4. Is the ingress rating certified, and by whom?
5. Does the quoted price include OEM firmware branding, or is that a separate line?

Wholesale pricing, container terms and OEM specification sheets are available through the wholesale enquiry page, or by email to info@solaguard.net. Quantity pricing and lead times for a specific project always come from a person — send the site layout and the camera count and you will get a real number back.