Blade Inspection and Age Tracking Made Easy and Standard
Through more than 20 years of development, the wind industry has grown from a playground for ‘environmental freaks’ to an attractive business, with 44.8GW of new installations during the last year. Because of the long life cycle of turbines, stakeholders in these tremendous machines have to find a cost-effective way to inspect their most vulnerable part – the blades. However, current systems on offer, such as rope access and crane operation, are often postponed by weather conditions and are both time and money consuming. Seeing the requirements of the industry, Cornis, a high-tech start-up based in Paris, has come up with a ground-based visual inspection solution which combines its knowledge of dynamic system and imaging processing. Cornis’ solution also enables operators to trace the evolution of blade defects and therefore helps their learning process towards cost reduction.By Jing Chen LI, Business Analyst, Cornis, Paris, France