TÜV SÜD Develops Smart Inspection System for Turbines

TÜV SÜD has developed a smart solution for inspecting onshore and offshore wind turbines which enables results to be recorded on site using mobile devices and saved in a database in a structured manner in accordance with the RDS-PP® industry standard.

A total of over 25,000 wind turbines are in operation in Germany. All are subject to mandatory inspection requirements, and must undergo regular checks with respect to structural integrity and operational safety. These requirements also apply to turbines in new offshore wind farms in the North Sea and the Baltic.

“Inspectors with clipboards are now a thing of the past,” said Dr Martin Webhofer, Head of Wind Energy at TÜV SÜD Industrie Service GmbH.

“Our end-to-end digitalised inspection system for wind turbines combines high-efficiency processes with structured data acquisition based on the codes set forth in the RDS-PP® industry standard. This is an advanced version of the German KKS, the proven international system for power plant designation.”

One of the key preconditions for the introduction of digitalised inspection was the possibility of applying RDS-PP® to wind turbines. The system assigns codes to components which serve as unique descriptors of the individual components of a system, their location and function, and enables them to be categorised.

“The system eliminates any confusion arising from the use of different terminology for the same components by inspection or service staff or manufacturers’ documentation; such confusion represents a significant obstacle in systematic evaluation of turbine condition, and thus makes optimised maintenance far harder to achieve,” said Dr Webhofer.

When conducting inspections, TÜV SÜD’s experts record their data using a special app on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. The findings are classified and structured, then automatically transmitted to a tamper-proof archive system and database. To achieve this, TÜV SÜD has expanded its electronic inspection log for wind turbines, netDocX.

The inspection report is automatically generated from the information entered, and is saved immediately after data input in the netDocX electronic log, which turbine operators can access directly from the Internet or using the app.

“Systematic recording and saving all inspection data provides a whole host of benefits,” said Dr Webhofer.

The benefits are said to range from immediate automated generation of inspection reports, to simplified and streamlined data management processes, achieved by allowing turbine operators to access all inspection data and reports for the turbines from a central source. Operators of large numbers of turbines are particularly appreciative of the extensive synergies created by the system and the informative statistics it delivers – for example, most frequently occurring faults or faults grouped by manufacturer or region – and can adjust their maintenance concepts and strategies accordingly.

“The data collected by the system enables operators to cut their maintenance costs, while also optimising the availability, and thus the profitability, of their turbines,” said Dr. Webhofer.

The company will debut the smart inspection solution at this year’s WindEnergy in Hamburg.