Windfarm inspection is a crucial part of maintaining any wind energy installation.
Turbines need regular checks for safety, performance and ensuring that they comply with national and international standards or regulations. Whether on or offshore, wind turbines are powerful structures that deserve powerful inspection solutions. As one of the often-hailed energy cornerstones of the future, windfarm inspection ought to be carried out with dynamic and future-looking inspection methods. Whilst the tried and trusted pen and paper checklist has been good enough for inspections in very simple terms until the 21st century, organisations and businesses looking ahead are now picking paperless inspection solutions as their tool of choice. With a diverse set of features and integration with other business systems, paperless inspection solutions are allowing for quicker, whilst more accurate, inspections of all things within the wind energy sector.
Windfarm inspection and monitoring of wind energy installations can today best be done through using paperless inspection devices and applications. Mobile devices can be paired with digital inspection applications that allow for any checklist to be completed with the mobile device in question. The tablet or smartphone camera can be used to take pictures of faults in asset or equipment pieces, which post-annotation can be attached as evidence of inspection to the checklist and report. This provides visual evidence for the condition of any machinery part or asset, which over time is vital for calculating ROI (Return on Investment) or accounting deprecation. Through asset cradle-to-grave lifecycle tracking, assets will also benefit from all checklists, reports and inspections being filed against the digital record of that asset – both drastically simplifying the audit trail and allowing for easy comparison against expected performance.
As well as better tracking of asset and equipment conditions, digital inspection solutions allow inspectors to take advantage of many other benefits. Within an inspection or check, field personnel may encounter a safety or performance issue that needs attending to. Through automatically suggested corrective actions, the inspector at hand can take the best next step possible. These corrective actions can be pre-configured at a management level, meaning that any manager can know that if issues were to arise in an inspection, that the best action towards limiting damage/possible effects will be taken. For wind farms with such crucial components to the operation of such huge installations, it is imperative that actions are not undertaken haphazardly. Repair or maintenance can mean that wind turbines must spend long times not in use which can mean high costs for many in the energy supply chain.
