Automated drones To be used for Turbine Inspections

Siemens wind energy is joining hands with US based company SKYSpecs to deploy drone technology for onshore and offshore wind turbine inspection. The motive of collaboration is to develop an inspection system that includes data collection, damage identification, classification and recommendations which will be faster, repeatable and more efficient that existing ones.

Siemens have been working in the wind energy industry to develop the most effortless and technologically sophisticated, fully automated solution on the market, minimizing the need to allocate highly trained  and expensive human resources on the job.

The automated technology allows drones to take off, capture high-resolution images of all four sides of each blade, return and land in under 15 minutes. The blades do not need to be stopped in any particular orientation. The captured data is uploaded to the cloud where it can be analyzed, annotated, and shared. Data inspection and report generation are completed in a fraction of the time it takes to conduct ground-based or rope inspections. Automation offers the flexibility to conduct inspections on-demand rather and at set intervals. Every image is tagged with the data that customers need to locate, annotate and make decisions about timing of blade repairs. Precise, accurate data location provides a clear benchmark and a digital timeline of damage progression.