Flying Inspectors Whiz Through Burbo Bank Extension

Ørsted and robotics solutions provider SkySpecs have completed an automated inspection of wind turbine blades on Ørsted’s Burbo Bank Extension wind farm off the coast of Liverpool Bay, UK.

Standing at 195 metres above sea level, the wind farm’s 32 MHI Vestas 8MW turbines are equipped with 80-metre blades, the biggest in the world.

Using drones, the time taken to inspect the blades reduced from around 2 hours to approximately 20 minutes, the operator said.

“Wind turbine technology has surpassed the industry’s expectations, making huge strides in innovation in a surprisingly short amount of time,” David-Lee Jones, Ørsted’s Senior Technical Project Lead, said.

“Bigger turbines have certainly helped in the rapid cost reduction we’ve seen in offshore wind, but also means we face new technical challenges in terms of inspecting and maintaining the turbines. Providing consistent image quality across the largest turbines offshore requires consistency from the drone. This was the purpose of our work with SkySpecs. We really wanted to validate that their technology could provide the type of precise and robust inspection capabilities that Ørsted expects.”

The 258MW Burbo Bank Extension was officially put into operation in May 2017 when it became the first commercial wind farm to feature 8MW turbines.

SkySpecs’ CTO Tom Brady said: “We are pleased that we’ve helped Ørsted move ahead with their goals. As an organisation, we are committed to applying robotic solutions to solve challenges faced by the renewable energy. We’re helping owners craft their predictive maintenance strategies with a mountain of blade data and analytics tools that help them understand the health of their fleet.”

Photo: Ørsted/SkySpecs