Operation and maintenance costs of wind turbines is currently 1-2 Eurocents per kilowatt produced, and a sizeable portion of these costs is related to blade cleaning. The purpose of this research idea is to reduce the maintenance cost by studying novel methods to enable efficient wind turbine cleaning using drones. While drones already represent an attractive and commercially viable alternative to manual blade cleaning, as demonstrated by the Danish company Sky Level, the process currently requires multiple operators and is highly taxing mentally. The long-term goal of the research is therefore to enable a single operator to efficiently control two or more drones for wind turbine maintenance tasks, which would reduce wind energy costs.
SDU researchers
- Anders Christensen, Professor, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, Faculty of Engineering. andc@mmmi.sdu.dk
- Norbert Krüger, Professor, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, Faculty of Engineering. norbert@mmmi.sdu.dk
- Rocio Chongtay, Associate Professor, Department of Language, Culture, History and Communication, Faculty of Humanities. rocio@sdu.dk
- Jerome Jouffroy, Professor, Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering. jerome@sdu.dk