WHY DO YOU NEED INSPECTION?
The inspection demands from the wind power plant businesses are created after the faults of the blades. These faults should be investigated in detail and the necessary actions must be taken. One of the most common problems in wind turbine blades is blade damage due to lightning.
When this damage is not observed, the damage can get bigger and the blade can break off at some point. Moreover, these damages can even cause larger damages that might require blade replacement. The cost for changing a blade is around $200.000 – $300.000 which creates a significant cost for the businesses. When the regular inspection is undertaken by Windlar Portal, these damages can be identified before getting too big and we prevent huge maintenance costs.
PROBLEM
As of 2020, there are more than 3500 wind turbines in Turkey. Therefore, 10500 wind turbine blades require periodic control and maintenance during their lifecycle. The blade damages on the wind turbines that do not undergo periodic controls might get larger over time and cause serious problems such as replacing the blade.
With the technological developments, using photographs and videos have gained importance in wind turbine maintenance and inspection processes. Various tools are required for imaging and managements of the photograph and video images collected from the blades. At this point, Windlar Portal software offered by Windlar enables end-to-end solution to obtain higher number of photographs and reliable damage identifications.
With the advancements in the drone technology, the wind turbine inspection processes are developing. If drones are not used in the inspection processes, a mountaineer technician climbs on the wind turbine with a rope for the necessary checks. But this process takes time which causes the turbine to shut down and do not generate electricity for a long time. Also, the risk of life safety exists. By using drones, this type of problems is prevented.
SOLUTION
Images obtained by the autonomous UAVs are uploaded on Windlar Portal software via the cloud. The uploaded images are processed with cloud-based software using artificial intelligence and machine learning and the damages on the wind turbine blades are identified. The damages are classified for size, length, damage type and degree. Then, the identified damages are instantaneously transferred to the system with machine learning and interpreted by material science expert engineers. The system automatically turns the data into a report. The reports are in PDF format and can be designed in the desired template.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN ENERGY
Windlar Portal software plays an effective role to plan and execute blade inspection and maintenance & repair processes by creating different user roles for employees working in different positions of the wind turbine plants.
The main users have the authorisation to change blade damage type and degree on the system. Additionally, the users can interpret the damage and ensure coordination within the business.
“Statistics Page” is designed for the users to access the statistical data of the existing damages. The damage distribution of the turbines in the plant, the highest damage and the highest damaged blade surface are presented clearly. Thus, a large data pool is created by regular blade inspection and this data enable to plan maintenance & repair activities or to guide a new installation.
The user can access the reports for the selected wind turbine blade and benchmark with previous inspection data. Thus, the user can access the data of the same damage over a certain period.
