Wind turbine blades are a crucial component to the wind turbine generator. However, they are prone to damages which can cause loss of performance or structural failure. Regular wind turbine inspections are no longer a warranty requirement, on the contrary they have become general practice or in some instances a necessity.

Drone based inspections have grown to be the industry norm with numerous service providers and product offerings in the market. Most of the service providers offer a short-term inspection solution focusing on single report generation of damages within a campaign. Progressive/long-term data collection campaigns with consistent data that can be compared from inspection to inspection have fallen short in the market.

Long-term inspection campaigns, where the same rotor blades are inspected using the same technology to generate a repeatable dataset, are beneficial to the Asset Owners/Managers.

Instead of a snapshot view of a single inspection they can judge the integrity of their blades based on data collected over the entire lifetime of a blade. These repeatable datasets lead to a more in-depth understanding of damage progression and allows asset owners and operators to focus on urgent repairs of Category 3 and upward whilst monitoring the damage progression on the lower category damages to find the best timing for repairs.

By developing data models enriched with historical repair costs, operators can budget for blade repairs more accurately and allow for better pricing of future wind projects.

Working with highly experienced industry professionals for data collection and having a user-friendly, flexible, and open platform platform that allows for detailed data analytics is key to success.

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