Drone led – the future of wind farm inspections

The latest collaboration marks the fourth consecutive partnership with top turbine manufacturers after General Electric, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Vestas.

“Knowing that the biggest suppliers see much value in Nearthlab’s services fills us with pride,” said Jay Choi, co-founder and CEO of Nearthlab.

“We’ll treat this partnership not just as another feather in our cap but an opportunity to help more wind farms make the most out of their operations with optimised inspection technology.”

Catching on

The initial phase of the project involved windfarms in Finland and Portugal.

Notably, inspections were handled by a single licensed pilot instead of the usual two-man squad, which lent further credibility to the efficiency and reliability of Nearthlab’s solutions.

Nearthlab is an AI-powered autonomous inspection platform for infrastructure inspection facilities. Since its launch in 2015, the company has helped windfarms around the world automate and optimise blade inspections.

The platform’s autonomous drone takes no more than 15 minutes to carry out an out-and-out inspection.

Data collected from the inspection is uploaded onto Zoomable, Nearthlab’s cloud-based analytics platform, which are then used to give insight into what is needed to optimise O&M procedures.

Following its recent successes, Nearthlab is set to expand its reach to wind farms in Spain and Italy in the coming weeks.