Ørsted uses drones and Cognite Data Fusion for data-driven turbine maintenance

Overview

Offshore wind operator Ørsted uses drones to fly inside monopile wind turbines and collect images and sensor data, which is organized in Cognite Data Fusion, powered by Microsoft Azure, to run computer vision models that track corrosion and cracks. The data-driven approach lets Ørsted reduce the number of technicians needed for inspection from four to two and eliminates the need to physically enter confined turbine spaces, improving safety while reducing maintenance cost and downtime.

The challenge

Offshore wind turbines are battered by wind, waves and rain around the clock; timely, efficient maintenance is critical to ensure the turbines don't break down and production stops. To perform maintenance, Ørsted sent crews of four inspection workers, with half remaining outside the turbine and the others entering the confined space to conduct visual inspection manually -- a resource- and time-intensive process with inherent safety risks from entering an enclosed space.

The solution

Ørsted chose Microsoft and the Industrial DataOps platform Cognite Data Fusion to digitalize its maintenance process and enable repeatable drone inspections in the confined interior spaces of its monopile wind turbines. Maintenance technicians use a drone to fly inside the turbine structure and collect images and other sensor data, which is automatically extracted from the drone provider's cloud platform and organized in Cognite Data Fusion, powered by Microsoft Azure's cloud computing services, to run computer vision models that track corrosion and cracks.

Reported business value

The data-driven approach lets Ørsted reduce the number of technicians needed for inspection from four to two and eliminates the need to physically enter confined turbine spaces, improving safety, significantly reducing maintenance cost, and increasing production by reducing the amount of time a turbine is shut down for inspection.