![](https://dronelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/512px-Wind_turbines_in_southern_California_2016-300x225.jpeg)
Erik Wilde from Berkeley, CA, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Researchers from Japan have developed a technique for using two drones to examine wind turbines without shutdown: significantly impacting the fee of maintenance. Read on to learn the way it really works.
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NTT Researchers, from left: Senior Research Engineer, Supervisor -Toshifumi Miyagi
Senior Research Engineer – Tatsuya Nakatani
Engineer -Takamasa Yoshida
Research Engineer – Fumiaki Nagase, Ph.D
Executive Research Engineer – Takeshi Onizawa, Ph.D
How Drones Are Making Wind Turbines Even More Sustainable
by Tatsuya Nakatani, NTT Senior Research Engineer
The past decade, in keeping with the Columbia Climate School, the usage of drones in applied research skyrocketed because the technology size and costs decreased while the capabilities of cameras, sensors and battery power increased. That’s true across fields—health, ecologically, environmentally and more.
Today, researchers are even applying drones to optimize the production of different energy within the hardest-to-reach places: offshore wind turbines.
Energy produced by wind is important to the worldwide adoption of renewable energy sources; nevertheless, the prices of operations and maintenance remain an obstacle, especially for offshore wind turbines. A 2022 report from the International Energy Agency found that wind electricity generation increased at a record level of 273 TWh (17 percent) in 2021—55 percent higher growth than achieved in 2020 and, “the best amongst all renewable power energies.” Yet, this report states that “the operation and maintenance cost may be very high for wind turbines, accounting for nearly 30% of the full wind turbine cost, which is considered one of the key aspects hindering market growth.” The 2 largest cost drivers for wind turbine operational expenditures are the space from the project to the upkeep facilities and the meteorological climate on the project site, in keeping with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Researchers with NTT recently unveiled an answer. By utilizing two drones, researchers developed a system by which the wind turbines could also be monitored for performance and damage without having to first turn the turbines off, greatly limiting the energy production that is usually lost during inspection downtime.
How, exactly, does the technology work? The Fresnel Zone
NTT’s researchers conducted the world’s first successful experiment by which two drones were used to simulate weak radio transmitters and receivers—one drone acting as a transmitter, the opposite the receiver. The researchers conducted an outside experiment to send and receive weak radio signals within the sky, successfully demonstrating transmission and reception at an altitude of 30 meters.
The outcomes trusted the creation of a Fresnel Zone, which could be defined as, “the subsurface area which reflects energy that arrives on the earth’s surface inside a time delay equal to half the dominant period.” In layman’s terms, a Fresnel Zone is what enables radio waves to propagate inside a given space.
By making a Fresnel Zone around an operating wind turbine, the weak radio signals could be each transmitted and received (Fig. 1).
Then, by comparing data collected via weak radio transmission and reception on a windmill model with rotating blades, researchers confirmed variations in reception levels when performing the test on damaged versus undamaged blades.
So, what should be done before these scientific results could be implemented in real wind farms? As noted above, researchers achieved a successful weak radio signal transmission at a height of 30 meters; nevertheless, wind turbines are typically around 80 meters tall within the U.S. Before this technology could be deployed, researchers must give you the option to create a Fresnel Zone at higher altitudes. The work to achieve this is already underway, with NTT researchers planning to successfully exhibit the technology at 80 meters in the subsequent three years.
Plus, the advantages of drone-based monitoring usually are not limited to wind turbines. For instance, NTT Communications and NTT DOCOMO launched a blade-free, blimp-type drone equipped with a high-resolution video camera that captures high-quality video and full-color LED lights that glow in radiant colours to maximise problem solving and data entry. Through its blade-free design, this drone can aid in facility inspections, infrastructure inspections, agricultural monitoring (resembling detecting weeds and analyzing field conditions) and even disaster response.
Drone technology provides a particularly adaptable, resilient foundation upon which additional technologies could be added to diversify functionality. Its supplementation of research across scientific fields is having a major impact on the world today, with the nice potential of creating an excellent greater impact within the near future.