During recent times we have seen huge investments worldwide into the design and installation of wind turbines both on and offshore. This trend is set to continue in the coming years. As well as developments in the power range, there has also been some dramatic changes to the equipment needed to install these assets.

Actual and future maintenance strategies in the offshore wind industry

Strategies to maintain the equipment also developed, but in many cases still focussed on increasing the efficiency of existing methodologies and optimizing logistic chains. Building expensive and fuel consuming assets, which leads to additional emissions. It also means a huge number of technicians, specialized in working at sea in challenging environments: working at height, in enclosed spaces, requiring expensive equipment to walk over from the vessels to the installations.

David Knukkel, CEO of RIMS (Robotics in Maintenance Strategies) explained, ‘we have

© WindEurope

PES WIND1

THINK TANK

WWW.PESWIND.COM 2

to look differently at wind turbine maintenance in general. We are in the middle of the 4th industrial revolution and there is a huge amount of technology available on the market. It is, however, hidden in different domains, fragmented and there is a lack of people who have a holistic view and the capabilities to integrate the technology into a product, which creates value in the industry. We must invest in products, which we don’t need to go to sea to use, we would only need to be done as a last resort.’

David has a background as Marine Engineer

and Maintenance Engineer/Maintenance Consultant. In 2015 he founded RIMS, and started to scout for new technology to automate dangerous and expensive maintenance tasks. He first focussed on discovering the capabilities of drones. Now RIMS offer Class approved drone inspections, not only for ships, constructions and mobile offshore units, but also assets in the oil and gas industry.

‘The drone industry is only at the beginning of what the technology can offer the market, and developments takes place with an exponential speed,’ interjected David. ‘Automation of flights, image recognition, reporting, 3D engineering, the pieces of technology to cover the entire process of asset management are available, but must be combined and integrated to cover the entire asset management process.’

There are two different kind of certification in the drone industry. The first one is related to the License to operate drones, which can vary depending on the country. For example, to carry out outdoor flights in Europe a company needs a full license, which is not required for indoor flights. In Singapore you need an Operator Permit for both types of flights.

This license to operate, however, does not mean that a company is certified to carry out inspections on Maritime Assets. This kind of certification is carried out by the Classification Societies like BV, Lloyds, ABS, RINA, ClassNK, IRClass and so on.

These Classification Societies carry out audits and certify a company as a Remote Inspection Specialist if they demonstrate their ability to adequately support a surveyor during a survey. For this type of certification, the pilots must not only have flight skills, but also deeper understanding of the assets and the thermology used during the preparation,

execution and reporting of an inspection.

’Due to my Maritime background and the variation of rules and regulations RIMS has focussed on the certification of the Classification Societies and joined forces with companies, which have a license to operate, and have skilled pilots who do have experience in the Maritime Industry. We have a pilot in Australia and in the Netherlands, we work together with the Dutch Drone Company’ David Knukkel added.

‘The corporation with the Dutch Drone Company is working very well. They have a lot of experience with outdoor asset inspections, including wind turbines, have a license to operate in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Belgium, even in most Restricted zones around airports (CTR’s). They are also deeply aware of the high standards customers require for using this technology and want to deliver the highest performance possible,’ said Feye de Zwart, CEO of Dutch Drone Company. It was founded in 2014 and provides International and certified drone inspection services in both onshore & offshore industries.

The company headquarters is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Well situated in the middle of the harbour area at the RDM-Innovation Dock. The company is certified for drone inspections in UK, Ireland Belgium, Norway and Hungary as well as the Netherlands.

The company works with professional teams of RPAS and airline pilots, offshore divers, CSWIP 3.4 inspection coordinators, technicians, photographers and data experts. Thus, ensuring there is always an experienced team on hand, for each typical type of project. The Dutch Drone Company is audited by companies like Shell and Exxon and has been focussing on inspections in the petro-chemical industries, where quality and

WWW.PESWIND.COM 2

THINK TANK

safety are core values.

Next to these industries we also see a lot of potential for drones in the renewable industry, especially the wind turbines. We both see many opportunities for the use of drones, either for blade inspections, or for internal inspection of the inside components, which are in some cased inerted for conservation.

The Dutch Drone Company is part of a large research project focussed on offshore wind turbine inspections. Experience shows that drone inspection is a complex process and technology and data play a crucial role.

Purpose of inspections we focus on in the research project are the following:

The focus of the inspections is to provide added value through automated, intelligent use of computer vision technology on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for the inspection of wind turbine blades.

As a result, UAVs can perform their task better and/or faster with a large degree of autonomy. The information can be extracted automatically from the images. From this advice or decisions can be extracted and given, or taken, for maintenance purposes.

Special software is being created:

• to support the drone pilot with real-time information, extracted from camera images and other sensors, so that he/she can carry out his mission better and easier

• to use the real-time information, as much as possible for an autonomous execution of the mission(s) by the UAV

• so that recorded images are processed automatically into procedure or business support information

• because fast and accurate images, distinguishing the damage, largely determines the speed of automation.

Result

The end result is a UAV that searches for a wind turbine on the basis of GPS information, then uses the camera and other sensors to fly past the turbine blades, collects images of sufficient quality, so that they can then be processed automatically, into an inspection report and providing recommendations regarding further research.

As stated in the beginning there are a lot of opportunities towards optimization of maintenance strategies in the wind industry. The biggest challenges are regulations and finding strategic partnerships, with companies who have a similar vision and are willing to invest in equipment and tools which do not yet exist.

The market is difficult to understand and most of the time is still in the hands of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). Financial benefits can be achieved very fast at offshore installations. The importance of safety is applicable to both onshore as offshore installations.

We are living in an interesting time and RIMS and the Dutch Drone Company look positively to the future, although it may be a bumpy ride, with many challenges ahead.

However, the question is no longer if the development and use of new technology will happen, but when. Fortunately, the services are offered at this stage already forfeit many requirements and the gained experience is leading the way forward.

Info:

info@dutchdronecompany.com www.dutchdronecompany.com

dknukkel@rims-bv.com www.rims-bv.com

THINK TANK

© WindEurope

PES WIND3