Technology
The sky’s the limit C
The Ventus Group has developed the fi rst-ever modifi ed helicopter drone capable of delivering and picking up payloads up to 230kg to the top of wind turbines or other construction sites, offering the potential to cut down on construction time and costs. With turbines growing ever larger, the potential benefi ts are clear to see. Nicholas Kenny speaks with Shavkat Mingaliev, CEO of Ventus Group, to learn more.
onstruction has always been a difficult and dangerous business, which is why we’ve always pushed the envelope in designing and developing technology to make it faster, easier and safer. Take the crane, for example. While the earliest cranes date back to Mesopotamia – or modern Iraq – around 3,000 BC, these were used to transport water for irrigation – the earliest cranes designed for lifting heavy loads were developed by the Ancient Greeks in the late 6th century BC.
From there, the technology grew ever-more advanced and efficient, going from making use of weights to treadwheels to hydraulics, and then right into the modern age. They’ve had to develop and become more complex, of course, as the demands on construction abilities have grown too – humanity now builds vast and complicated structures on high mountains and far out at sea, with no sign of slowing down. It’s apt, then, that the word “crane” stems from its resemblance to the long neck of a bird, as one Austrian company looks to iterate on the traditional form of a crane – by having it take flight.
A flying start Founded in 2017, the Ventus Group offers a range of services to optimise the performance of wind farms around the world by reducing risk, maintenance and repair costs, as well as extension of wind turbines. It is a leading provider of end-to-end optimisation solutions for wind turbine performance, with turbine rotor efficiency as its primary focus, as damaged or poorly aligned turbine blades are the most common cause for underperformance. In 2018, the company received funding from the Austrian Research
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Promotion Agency (FFG) – the national funding agency for industrial research and development – to patent its rotor monitoring technology, consisting of its proprietary sensor nodes, algorithms, software and so on, which was commercially launched at the end of September 2022. Ventus’ work here in the wind energy sector, and its subsequent conversations with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), led the company to begin development of a flying heavy-lifting crane capable of transporting tools or spare parts from an onshore site to an offshore service vessel or substation. This crane would also be used to transport tools up to the surface of turbine blades in order to carry out repair work, and then transported safely back to the ground. Traditional cranes present a number of challenges for the wind energy industry, which typically builds its turbines in hard-to-reach areas with the highest wind speeds – whether that’s out at sea or up on a mountainside. However, even building in more reachable areas presents challenges of its own. “Many countries in Europe are defined as ‘low-wind areas’,” explains Shavkat Mingaliev, CEO of Ventus Group. “In order to capture the wind, you need to build taller towers – and the higher you go up, the more prohibitive are the crane costs.” His OEM contacts in the wind industry were clear that – to a certain height – they were happy to continue working with traditional cranes, but beyond that point the option of a flying crane was increasingly alluring. Seeing the potential in such a project, Ventus Group teamed up with Unmanned Helicopters, a helicopter drone manufacturer, in October 2021 to develop a heavy-lifting solution.
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
Ventus Group
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