"As drones possess the capability of reaching the most remote areas with little to no manpower needed and require the least amount of effort, time, and energy, the adoption of using drones for wind turbine inspections is rapidly growing. Furthermore, they allow for capture of digital high resolution images and as a result generate high quality data in combination with less efforts and higher efficiency at lower costs."
"The Future Energy Consulting Company Limited", published last July an interesting paper about the use of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) in the wind energy sector.
"Originating from the military, drones or UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) saw in the last years a massive commercial adoption and usage expansion across industries all over the world – and there is a high probability that your children already play with them.
Drone technologies developed in the past years and individuals, companies, and governments realized that drones have multiple uses, such as aerial photography, shipping and delivery, gathering information for disaster management as well as search & rescue operations, geographic mapping of inaccessible terrains and areas, building safety inspections, precision farming and crop monitoring, security and surveillance – to name a few. In general, drones have proven to be extremely beneficial in accessing places humans cannot reach or enter and on tasks they are unable to perform in a timely and efficient manner.
Today, the adoption of drone technology across industries is a mega trend and more and more businesses understand their potential.
Accordingly, we were wondering what role drones already have and will have in the future and what the
future impact of drones in wind industry may be. As drones possess the capability of reaching the most remote areas with little to no manpower needed and require the least amount of effort, time, and energy, the adoption of using drones for wind turbine inspections is rapidly growing. Furthermore, they allow for capture of digital highresolution images and as a result generate highquality data in combination with less efforts and higher efficiency at lower costs.
Accordingly, we performed as part of our research work an online survey and invited more than 300 selected participants from the wind energy industry. Furthermore, interested individuals from the wind industry and academia were invited to participate by kind invitation through the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) Joint Programme on Wind Energy."
The complete paper can be read in this LINK