Over the lifetime of a wind turbine, operation and maintenance costs represent 25% of total levelised cost per kWh produced. The majority of these costs are attributed to the wind turbine’s blades, yet current methods of inspecting these blades are outdated and inefficient. Blade inspection procedures still largely relies on qualified inspectors roping down each blade to manually inspect for any flaws or defects present on the blade. This is clearly a very hazardous, time-consuming (5 hours), and expensive method (€1500). Other less used methods of blade inspection include capturing blade images from ground cameras and manual review by experts. However, poor image quality and strong backlight leaves many blade flaws undetected. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are now being used to take pictures of the blades from much closer up. Current UAV's however require dedicated experts for both flight control as well as image processing, analysis, and fault detection. Pro-Drone's integrated WindDrone Zenith’s solution is a breakthrough solution providing enabling 3-blade inspection in a single flight. Our technology solution is fully equipped with highly accurate inspection equipment hardware coupled with smart software. The software allows the UAV to be fly autonomously, avoid collisions, automatically detect any faults, and generate reports for the customer on each wind turbine inspected. Machine learning algorithms are used to continuously improve automated fault detection based on a growing database of captured images and their analysis. Our "BladeInsight" cloud reporting platform makes actionable reports available to our customers as part of this solution. Pro-Drone Zenith provides for a 50% direct cost saving, and decreases turbine inspection downtime by 6X, as compared to existing methods.

Over the lifetime of a wind turbine, operation and maintenance costs represent 25% of total levelised cost per kWh produced. Half of this cost concerns the blades. Blade inspection procedures still rely on qualified inspectors roping down each blade: a hazardous, time-consuming (5h) and expensive method (1500€). ProDrone’s integrated solution delivers a fully equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based platform for capturing, processing and analysing inspection data, enabling a turbine downtime lower by 6 times and a cost saving of over 50%. Pro-Drone is targeted at wind park operators who seek a reduction in the cost of blade inspection and additional revenues from decreased downtime. Within the overall project, Pro-Drone intends to fully automate the UAV blade inspection process eliminating human intervention in the drone’s take-off and landing phase; optimization of the post-processing algorithm for automatic fault recognition; and complete a sound demonstration and validation of the technology in operation with wind turbine operators. There is over 154 GW of installed wind energy capacity in the EU (over 60.000 wind turbines) and 433 GW globally (314.000 wind turbines!) which can asily adopt this solution and benefit from safer and more economical turbine analysis. The Pro-Drone will effectively contribute to the European 2030 targets of at least 27% renewable energy in final energy consumption at European level and an anticipated €1 million plus will be saved on the total amount of energy installed in EU.