- Category: Articles

The old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – a 16-fold return on investment in this case – is severely conservative when it comes to maintenance of wind turbine rotor blades. The cost of repairing early-stage damage – or even better, implementing remediation solutions for serial issues before damage occurs in most blades – is often minuscule compared with the cost of a single catastrophic failure. Within the next few years, the industry must evolve to a practice of routine scheduled inspections followed by proactive repair and remediation in order to minimise the life-cycle cost of ownership.
By Dr Kyle Wetzel, Vice President Blade Services, SkySpecs, USA
- Category: Articles

The northwestern coastal area of Sri Lanka is identified as a region with substantial wind power potential. Its favourable geographical location and terrain contribute to higher wind power generation there. Presently, the Sri Lankan government is promoting wind power generation in the country. Long-term power generation predictions are required for evaluating the financial viability of wind power plants. Therefore, the impact of climate change on wind power generation is significant. Wind and climate variability are inextricably interconnected. However, although much attention is given to the potential effects of climate change on surface temperatures and precipitation, there has been comparatively minor discussion or analysis of changes in wind speed.
By Mahinsasa Narayana and Kethaki Wickramaarachchi, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
- Category: Articles

Inspection of marine foundation structures and the immediate surrounding seabed is technically challenging, time-consuming and costly. Subsea inspection techniques draw more on the technology and procedures of other offshore sectors than on those of onshore wind. The inaccessibility of subsea structures means that maintenance checks are performed much less frequently than on the above-water components. Seabed scour is a stability issue around large pile/jacket structures, particularly in strong tidal flows. There are many potential risks associated with personnel and vessels working in close proximity to turbine structures for the extended periods needed for inspections. MarynSol is working to introduce viable, cost-effective solutions to the autonomous inspection of marine foundation structures, from seabed to splash zone.
By Jonathan Evans, Director, MarynSol, UK
- Category: Articles

Wind farms are equipped with a SCADA system to monitor and collect data from the wind turbines. It is industry practice to collect data in 10-minute intervals and convert this data into specific statistics – the average, and in some cases, the maximum/minimum and standard deviation. Due to the dynamics of wind turbines, many underlying issues cannot be detected by an analysis of these statistics. This article discusses how the frequency of the dynamics of wind turbines is much higher than 10 minutes, and hence damaging behaviour and abnormalities cannot be identified with traditional SCADA data. The article also explores some examples of what could be achieved if data with a higher sampling rate is available.
By Carlos Gonzalez, Technical Director, Renewable Dynamics, Scotland
- Category: Articles
New Poul la Cour Tunnel at DTU Risø

By Nicholas Gaudern, Chief Technical Officer, Power Curve, Denmark
- Category: Articles
Optimising Wind Turbine Performance and Availability with Augmented Intelligence
Recently the term ‘predictive maintenance’ has received much attention across many industries. Perhaps this is due in part to the synergies with other rapidly developing areas of technology such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the internet of things, and big data analytics.
It is certainly not all hype; in mostareas of industry where operational costs represent a significant proportion of the overall life-cycle cost of a product, a strong business case can be made for the introduction of predictive maintenance. Wind energy can certainly benefit from such innovations, and perhaps the potential reduction in the overall cost of energy would be the final push that is needed to bring the industry through grid parity and beyond. Although the use of condition monitoring in wind turbines is nothing new, recent technical innovations provide the framework that is needed for a more complete implementation of predictive maintenance.

By Christopher Gray, CEO, i4SEE TECH, Austria
- Category: Articles

In this article, Sulzer & Schmid Laboratories, a Swiss company developing technology solutions for the inspection of wind turbine rotor blades, explains how drone-based technology platforms suitable for large-scale, multi-gigawatt blade inspection campaigns require a specific set of characteristics that will provide the level of scalability and deployability needed to succeed.
By Tom Sulzer, CEO and Co-Founder, Sulzer & Schmid, Switzerland
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