The wind energy sector is on the cusp of a revolution in turbine management, highlighted by the growing adoption of robotic solutions. The industry is developing the solutions to efficiently maintain and inspect these gargantuan wind turbines, which average a hub height of 103.4 meters, higher than the Statue of Liberty. In this new approach, machine drones, crawlers, and artificial intelligence — AI — have become key actors. Even with leaps in automation, safety experts and other leading advocates point to the continued need for human oversight in both ensuring safety and effectiveness.
Contrary to common belief, wind turbines have a long-life span of 20-25 years, but like all machinery they need constant maintenance to run at full capacity. Leading-edge erosion on turbine blades necessitates repairs every two to five years, while structural issues may arise between 10 to 15 years of operation. The need for skilled technicians is skyrocketing. Those are some of the projections indicating that, globally, we’ll need 569,000 wind technicians by 2026.
As the industry evolves, the question remains: will wind turbine management reach complete automation, or will the human element continue to play a vital role?
The Rise of Robotic Solutions
Automated solutions have become a popularized answer in the field of robotics within the wind industry over the last 10 years. By alleviating the human safety component for employees, these innovations are dramatically reducing the risks that come with inspection and testing. Drones have become a key tool on complex external inspections, and crawlers improve access to hard-to-reach internal landscapes of turbine blades.
Robotic solutions are particularly well-suited for physically demanding, dangerous, or dirty tasks. They perform inspection data capture, repair of defects, and blade wash at heights too dangerous for human workers. Kruze, who leads the world in wind energy robotics, explains that the more robotic systems do the physically demanding and dangerous tasks, the better. They can capture inspection data, carry out repairs and even clean blades at height, keeping human operators and specialists safely on the ground.
In fact, the market for robotic solutions in the energy sector is expected to skyrocket to nearly $36.89 billion by 2030. This spike is indicative of the ever-growing belief in robots’ ability to enhance operational efficiency. Never has there been a time when technology has offered such real solutions to keeping our infrastructure safer and more cost-effectively maintained.
The Role of AI in Wind Turbine Management
Artificial intelligence (AI) is key to determining insights across massive amounts of data. It accomplishes all this quickly and accurately, making its mark inspecting wind turbine blades. This comprehensive approach simplifies the data collection efforts. A consistent approach is important to ensure the integrity of inspection results is not compromised.
Concannon notes the importance of standardization in the inspection process: “In up-tower ultrasonic inspection, you might use a different rope team and NDT team each time. Each of the two independent technicians will scan the blade using their own custom methodology. Enterprise customers do want one coherent data set, returned in a consistent manner.
Through the use of robotic solutions integrated with AI functionalities, organizations can ensure accurate field measurements and data uniformity. Concannon agrees, noting that having a robot just standardizes and automates everything. Encoders read every move, giving you exact distance measurements and keeping the same scan path repeatable without fail.
As fascinating as they are, none of these AI technologies replace the value of human effort. AI is particularly effective at spotting cracks and other structural defects. This power releases humans to focus on more complex matters, such as erosion. Falk emphasizes this collaborative approach: “As AI learns to look for cracks, humans can look for erosion. Once AI is trained to detect that, humans can search for other anomalies.”
The Human Element in Wind Turbine Maintenance
Robotics and AI have come a long way. Specialists assure that it will take a human touch to keep those wind turbines running. Robotic solutions for repair operations, such as Advanced Erosion Repair Robots, are slowly making their way into the industry. On other tasks, the complexities still require highly-skilled humans.
Janaki Mohanan Nair highlights the limitations of current robotic technologies: “A lot of maintenance needs are nuanced, and we still rely heavily on humans to perform that type of repair or remediation.” Humans introduce a unique understanding that is crucial to diagnosing root causes and designing meaningful solutions that work.
With the continued expansion of automation Kreuze stresses the need to find balance with humanistic factors. He notes that customers are increasingly viewing AI and robotics as ways to augment human potential, rather than replace it. He’s convinced that automation can reduce costs dramatically and improve safety. He believes it can’t ever fully supplant the need for human judgment and expertise.
Concannon shares similar sentiments: “I don’t think it is ever going to get to a point where there is zero human interaction. I think it can get pretty damn close, but we will still need the human element.” This outlook highlights the rapidly increasing need for human and machine cooperation when maximizing wind turbine control.