Vestas and InspecTools partner to expand wind blade service

Vestas (Aarhus, Denmark) announced Feb. 27 that customers will now get online access to blade inspection analysis and data from any of their turbines in any market, thanks to the expansion of Vestas' partnership with InspecTools (Folsom, CA, US), a leading energy asset inspection company. With the ability to efficiently analyze inspections, Vestas strengthens predictive wind turbine maintenance, enabling customers to lower costs and better manage risks and safety.

"By extending our partnership with InspecTools, Vestas will provide customers with even better and faster blade condition insights, which enable customers globally to better manage their fleets by investing more effectively in maintenance to lower costs and increase production and revenues," says Christian Venderby, group senior vice president and head of service at Vestas.

The partnership includes global access to the asset data management system WindAMS that enables customers to utilize Vestas' technical knowledge and inventory of wind turbine performance data to obtain inspection insights. Together with customer access to an online portal to view blade conditions across entire fleets, WindAMS can further improve predictive maintenance and help mitigate issues such as severe leading-edge erosion, which can reduce annual energy production by up to five percent. The partnership also includes an agreement to further develop WindAMS artificial intelligence (AI) to automate inspection data analysis.

According to InspecTools’ CEO, Paul Bingaman, "Deploying WindAMS will enable Vestas to standardise the collection, review, analysis and reporting of turbine blade condition data collected anywhere, by any method.”