Inspection of wind farms had never been an easy or safe task and when it comes to off shore wind farms, the risks involved, increases multiple folds. Thanks to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), inspection of wind turbines can now be carried out very easily and with very low safety risks involved when compared to the traditional ways.
A very successful drone assisted inspection activity of an offshore wind farm, BARD Offshore 1, comprising of 80 BARD 5.0 turbines was recently carried out by Visual Working and the support of the Danish vessel company ESVAGT. The wind farm generates a total of 400 Mega Watts of power and is located approximately 100 kilometers from the shores of Borkum Island, in Northern Germany (Michael, 2017).
The whole inspection activity was carried out by Visual Working. The ESVAGT vessel was designated as the base of operations and a drone took about 25 minutes to complete inspection of a wind turbine which is significantly lower than the traditional full day activity at a single turbine. The use of drones for inspection is also way more safe than, dangling inspectors through a rope to check each blade of turbines in detail.
The inspection drone is mounted with a High Definition camera and it flies by each blade to capture images of the whole blade surface from all sides. An inspector present on the vessel or base of operations then analyze the images and identifies any flaws if found. The flaws are marked through our cloud system and the inspector then takes decision of whether, immediate rectification or repair is necessary and predicts the action plans accordingly.
A specially designed software has been developed by Helvetis, able to automatically stitch and review the collected images of the blades and provide actionable intelligence to the inspectors. These proprietary software is very innovative and allow a very efficient review of the blades. This helps in further reduction of time required for inspection of the turbine.
The Wind Turbine’s inspection through drones, is based on three C’s i.e. Collect, Compute and Consume. The first phase includes collection of detailed raw data in the form of videos or images of the target turbine. The second phase then involves identification of flaws and separating actionable intelligence. This may be carried out through software or inspectors. Once the actionable intelligence is in hand, the third phase, i.e. Consume begins, in which expert inspectors analyze the actionable data collected and give their decisions for repair and maintenance activities and prioritize them accordingly.
The use of drones in Wind Farm or Turbine inspections has simply revolutionized the inspection industry due to major benefits over the traditional methods. Drone assisted inspections are not only several folds less time consuming and safer, but also with the help of high tech image processing, thermal and infra-red cameras, these drones are able to identify defects which are invisible to naked eyes. Collectively, it can be easily said that, extensive use of drones will be seen in very near future, in the industry of wind farm inspections.
References
Froese, Michael (2017). How Drone takes on inspection of offshore wind farm. Windpower Engineering & Development. Available from: http://www.windpowerengineering.com/construction/projects/offshore-wind/drone-inspects-offshore-wind-farm/ [Accessed On: 14 October 2017]
Russell, Tom (2017). ESVAGT Offers Drone Inspection. 4COffshore.com. http://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/esvagt-offers-drone-inspection-nid5940.html [Accessed On: 14 October 2017]
Foxwell, David (2017). Esvagt inspects offshore turbines using vessel-based drone. Marine Electronics & Communications. Available from: http://www.marinemec.com/news/view,esvagt-inspects-offshore-turbines-using-vesselbased-drone_48194.htm [Accessed On: 14 October 2017]