Can drones cut onshore wind LCOE?

With the cost of energy key to the onshore wind sector's success, this blog looks at one way of reducing the time spent inspecting turbines.

Whichever sector you’re in, it’s hard to escape the rise of the drone.

Three years ago there were about 150 active companies offering drone services in the UK. Today there are almost 2,500.

Away from the buzz of publicity created by Amazon’s first drone delivery last year, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming ubiquitous for a huge variety of industrial applications.

With schemes covering a variety of terrains from sea level to mountain top, onshore wind developers face a challenging O&M environment.

Oil and gas companies including Statoil, Shell and Total – all well-used to working in high winds and remote locations – are already taking advantage of drones to tackle these challenges.

But can they help onshore wind?

Companies like Texo, Cyberhawk and AerialVision think so. They’re using drones to provide HD images and video, reducing the need for challenging manual inspections.
At the very least, drones speed up the inspection process, as Chris Bley, Chief Executive of InspecTools, explains:

“Currently, drone inspections can cover up to 10 or 12 turbines daily, reviewing each blade within anything from four to nine minutes.

“This compares to a manual inspection rate of two to five turbines a day.”

Shelley Regan, Commercial Development Manager of Scottish Renewables member Texo Drone Survey and Inspection, sets the scene:

“Inspecting assets manually is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process that can make up a significant percentage of an onshore wind developer’s operating costs each year.

“In some cases, manual inspection of certain assets can also be dangerous.

“Unmanned aerial vehicle technology is now an established part of maintenance inspections and surveys across the renewables industry.

“A UAV can be launched in a matter of minutes and deliver real-time high-definition footage to an inspection team safely located on the ground.

“The level of detail, coupled with the ability to review, slow down, and replay footage, means highly-detailed inspections can be carried out to identify problem areas or regular maintenance requirements.

“All of this provides data to inform engineering decisions in a fraction of the time it would take to cover areas such as nacelles and blades.”

With competitive auctions now the norm, the cost of energy is being squeezed as never before.

In onshore wind any intervention which can reduce costs and increase the amount of time a turbine is generating is to be welcomed.

Texo’s Shelley Regan continues:

“It is not just the savings in terms of time- and cost-efficiency that are decisive, but the numerous operational benefits that include improved monitoring and planning and the removal of risks to personnel.

“Information from drone inspections also means that repairs can be precisely planned, based on the level of detail acquired.”

The more quickly detail can be acquired – be it by manual or drone inspection – the more quickly a turbine can get back to doing what it does best: producing power.

Jose Vega-Lozano, director of AerialVision, adds:

"As well as the significant time which is saved using drones for wind turbine inspections, drones are able to operate in higher wind speeds than traditional rope access technicians, further reducing turbine downtime.”

In the near future, drones which follow automated flight paths – without the need for a human pilot – could allow wind farm project teams to inspect up to twice as many turbines in a day as they can today.

Drone examination costs vary, with some operators quoting only slightly more than £200 per turbine and others claiming costs are on a par with those for manual inspections.

What is clear is that early intervention in O&M can pay dividends.

As Scottish Renewables Senior Policy Manager Lindsay Roberts wrote in a blog back in January 2016:

“O&M means keeping looking at what we do, then using that learning to do it better.”

Drones are just part of a solution which will continue to drive down costs in onshore wind.

Those cost reductions are high on the agenda for Scottish Renewables’ Onshore Wind Conference and Exhibition in Glasgow on June 20.

Cutting LCOE, improving network access and finding sustainable routes to market are some of the most pressing issues for the sector, and these topics will also be discussed in detail at the event.

Speakers include Richard Braakenburg, Director of Distributed Energy & Onshore Renewables at the Green Investment Bank; Catherine Cleary, Principal Consultant at TNEI and Callum Whiteford, Community Relations Manager, RES.