REAL TIME DATA
FEATURE SPONSOR
A DIGITAL APPROACH TO SERVICING AND INSPECTION
Most wind turbine servicing and inspection findings are still recorded using pen and paper. This outdated approach creates challenges and the industry can do so much better.
Every company has its own method for completing a wind turbine inspection or maintenance action then reporting the findings. For example, a typical approach for inspection includes…
• Take photographs and borescope images of the inspected components
• Quickly complete a pen and paper checklist while up-tower
• Return to the site office or hotel and spend several hours compiling findings into a spreadsheet or document
• Send reports to colleagues and/or the engineering manager to review for consistency, identify recurring failure modes and establish any required maintenance actions going forward
What happens with the findings post- inspection? Do hundreds of reports get buried in a folder, never to be seen again? Quickly accessible and readily searchable data is paramount for ensuring site engineers can track failure progress and identify recurring defects. The traditional approach is difficult to manage and even more difficult to scale. It raises challenges,
many of which can be overcome by moving to a digital approach for recording data.
A BIG CHALLENGE – QUALITY AND CONSISTENCY
One of the biggest challenges is consistency – for example, the written descriptions of observations can vary greatly between technicians. One technician’s interpretation of ‘bearing damage’ and its severity may differ with another technician’s. Poor consistency drives poor quality, because components will receive unnecessary maintenance or, even worse, miss maintenance that is urgently required.
When it comes to inspection data, especially for warranty claims, consistency and quality are critical. Yet, this is extremely difficult to ensure when multiple technicians (possibly from different contractors) are performing full turbine walk-downs containing 200+ inspection items. To compound this problem, a huge amount of data is collected and generated during inspection and servicing – it is difficult to keep track of all this information, and keep it traceable and searchable for future use.
FIELD PRO – CLOUD BASED INSPECTION AND SERVICE SOFTWARE
Romax InSight developed Field Pro to improve the servicing and inspection process through a combination of a mobile application, running on a tablet or smartphone, and a web-based software tool. Field Pro ensures consistent data entry by using a standardised severity rating system and incorporating common failure modes and recommendations for each component in drop-down lists, while still allowing manual entry for unforeseen failure modes.
Using the mobile application means
that reports can be synchronised in real- time. Not only does this enable managers to review data and monitor consistency while the inspection or servicing project
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www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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