Yellowtail Offers UAS for Wind Turbine Blade Inspection

Yellowtail Aviation, an unmanned aerial inspection company, has announced Aero-Eyes, an unmanned aircraft inspection service for wind turbine blade inspection,which uses the cbyerquad platform from Australia’s Cyber Technology.

Yellowtail’s Aero- Eyes UAS are fitted with high-definition, high-resolution video, still and in some cases thermal imaging cameras. Remotely controlled from the ground, the pilot takes Aero-Eyes off vertically. The aircraft is flown to within 25 feet or so of the wind turbine and for the next ten minutes, the pilot maneuvers Aero-Eyes to take high-definition videos and pictures of the turbine’s blades.

Real-time video feeds enable rapid decision-making. The pilot then lands Aero-Eyes and removes the Secure Digital (SD) memory card that contains all the high-resolution videos and pictures. A new SD card is installed and Aero-Eyes is ready to inspect the next turbine.

“Until now, blade inspection has been costly, time consuming and dangerous,” said John Harding, Yellowtail Aviation Founder & President. A crane with scaffolding and ropes are moved into place so that technician crews can scale it and perform the inspection. Many hours later, the inspection is completed and the turbine is turned back on.

But with Yellowtail’s Aero-Eyes unmanned aerial inspection methodology, nobody has to climb anything. No cranes, man-baskets, or scaffolding required. The turbine is stopped for only few minutes. High quality video and still images are quickly captured and the turbine is turned back on. What used to take hours, now takes minutes.

Wind turbine farm owners and operators save time, reduce costs and improve safety. The actual inspection takes ten minutes or so. Thus a 100-turbine wind farm can have all of its turbine blades inspected in a matter of a few days.

Turbines need to be turned off for only the ten minutes or so it takes to record the videos and take the photographs. The turbine can then be started back up and resume generating electricity and revenues.

Source: Press Release