French blade inspection specialist Cornis is about to complete a large blade inspection campaign for DONG Energy. Together with MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, DONG Energy has contributed to Cornis’ offshore success story, the company told Offshore WIND .
Cornis’ system is composed of a high-powered camera on a motorized head. From the transition piece, Cornis takes pictures of the entire surface of the blades, a so-called “photographic scan”.
After receiving the data, the company processes it and integrates the reconstructed inspected blades (2D vision) into its web-based platform, where all the blade defects are located from the hub, measured and classified depending on their criticality level.
The company said that all its clients have a personal access to its web-based platform where they can keep track on the ageing of their blades and compare data with past inspections.
“As we offer to train our offshore clients’ technicians to our system, they can handle themselves the data acquisition part – the photographic scan – and plan their inspections more easily. When there is a good weather window, they can be quickly on the field. This is more profitable for the offshore wind parks that can buy our system at cost price, internalize our solution and so be autonomous in their blade inspections,” Cornis explained.
Cornis Blade Inspection system cuts down the inspection time from one day to maximum of two hours. Since the summer offshore blade inspections started in April 2015, 25% of offshore wind farms have used Cornis’ ground-based photographic blade inspection solution, the company highlighted.
Image: Cornis