Providing Quality Assurance Over the Lifetime
The standard inspection method for quality assurance of the exterior surfaces of wind turbines is to employ people trained as rope access or industrial climbers. But this is not the only way. This article, by Robert Hörmann of Aero Enterprise in Austria, outlines (using his company’s products) how drones can undertake visual inspection of turbines, and then supporting software and archiving can be used to analyse the data. As the author admits, drones and airborne access will never be a complete substitute for manned inspection, and there will always be the need for rope access workers, but he shows that there are many advantages to drone-based inspection together with software analysis and archiving.
By Robert Hörmann, CEO/CTO and Founder of Aero Enterprise, Austria