Not convinced? Let us give you five very good reasons why.

Maximizing Efficiency with Regular Maintenance

• Did you know regular maintenance increases turbine efficiency by up to 20%, resulting in an average annual energy production boost of £50,000 to £100,000.

Cost Savings Through Preventive Maintenance

• Implementing a preventive maintenance plan can save up to thousands of pounds per year per wind turbine – avoiding major breakdowns and reducing costly emergency repairs.
• For instance, the cost of repairing or replacing a damaged wind turbine blade can range from £80,000 to £300,000 depending on the severity of the damage.

Extending Lifespan

• Well-maintained wind turbines have a lifespan extended by 10 years on average, adding approximately £150,000 to £250,000 in additional energy production.

Data-Driven Decisions

• Data analytics in maintenance can lead to a reduction of up to £30,000 in maintenance costs by optimizing service schedules and predicting failures more accurately.

Sustainable Energy for the Future

• Effective maintenance ensures consistent energy generation, supporting wind power’s contribution to supplying over 7% of global electricity demand and reducing CO2 emissions by 1.8 billion tons annually.
• Missing leading edge erosion damages on wind turbine blades can increase maintenance costs by up to £40,000 and reduce the turbine’s annual energy production by 2% to 4%, resulting in significant financial losses over time.

Want to find out more? Give us a call today.

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Focusing on optimising the way we run our path-planning when inspecting wind turbines, Vilius’s work helped to progress both our user experience and overall efficiency of the system.

By revising some of the logic in our path-planning algorithm, Vilius helped us reduce the time it takes for some of our checks by more than 50%. Overall, the changes saw an increase in inspection efficiency and, consequently, a reduction in turbine down-time, which is great news for both the drone operator and the client.

We have loved having Vilius with us and we can’t wait to see what he does next.

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In the past, due diligence was often considered irrelevant as wind turbines were smaller in both scale and power. Now, with huge blades and high-power turbines, each minute of downtime is hugely significant and, if major repair work is needed, such as a rampant leading edge erosion or repairing a full set of Category 3 and 4 damages, the costs can soon drastically add-up. 

As such, when it comes to buying or selling a wind farm, all assets must be thoroughly checked to avoid any unfortunate surprises with regard to their status or condition. Having an independent blade inspection to validate the health of the blades is crucial to all parties involved. 

A blade inspection by Perceptual Robotics includes a full and detailed report with high-quality images as standard. The real-time state of the blades will be shown and should damage be discovered, appropriate measures can be decided, budgeted and taken into account in the Purchase Agreement.

It is not just purchasing an asset which requires such due diligence. When the end of warranty is reached, you will need to make sure the existing company has fulfilled all its obligations with regards to blade repair. A blade inspection report can support you in making an informed decision. 

Reaching the end of your warranty is also a great opportunity to rethink how you want your inspections to be made and reported on in the future. We suggest setting up guidelines and clear responsibilities in the contracts to help you better manage and optimise your costs. Having the raw data in your control, regardless of who performed the inspection and past or future changes of the subcontractor will also provide a piece of valuable information on your asset you can use when optimising future O&M contracts or designing business plans.

Did you know inspections can help you lower your insurance costs too? By providing access to inspections, and submitting a plan for inspection campaigns to your insurers, they will be able to assess and quantify risks and may even lower your premiums.  You will also be able to predict which events may trigger an insurance compensation in an easier way by relating to previous or post-incident inspections.  In the future, as they start perceiving its full potential, we will see more and more compulsory blade inspections required both by insurers and lenders in project finance.

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It is also more difficult to fix, which means a longer turbine downtime is needed during repair. More severe damage also causes greater efficiency losses i.e. as leading edge erosion increases in severity the overall efficiency of the turbine comes down during operation.

It is worth considering whether this is a real problem – is damage being systematically missed? To assess this, we carried out a review of historic inspections with current technology (AI), and discovered that up to 15% of damage in those inspections had been missed. The client estimated that late detection, and the additional cost of repair and downtime, was 10x the cost of the inspection.

This clearly highlights the difference between an average inspection and a good one. When you scale this to hundreds or thousands of wind turbines, a system that is built around reliability represents a disproportionate increase in value.

At Perceptual Robotics, we are now working to take this a step further by not only reliably detecting damage but also helping customers make the best decisions about what to do with that information.

To do this, we leverage historical inspection data, with damage accurately localised on the blades and matched across inspections through time and show it in a single screen and in the reports, so reviewers can easily track damage progression across time. This information is coupled with site and turbine specific information.

For instance, leading edge erosion progresses at a much faster rate on larger blades and in rainy and windy conditions. The combination of this information allows us to predict future damage evolution and help our customers optimise their repair strategy.

The same type of damage on different blades in different environments requires different repair strategies.

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On the 28^th and 29^th at 11:30am we will be holding a live explanation of our Dhalion system for autonomous drone blade inspections. Don’t miss hearing more about our unique system straight from the experts.

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Want to talk #inspections #wind #robotics? Get in touch to meet with Derek.

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Want to get a head start over the next season? Get in touch to discuss our all-year-round inspections and how we can help optimise your repair strategy.

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