When a drone helps to maintain wind turbines

Can you describe your company for us in a few sentences?

SupAirVision supports the performance of wind turbines and develops a wide range of blade diagnostics. It is a tech start-up that innovates in several areas including drones, on-board sensors (lightning tester, photos, thermography) and data (machine learning, AI, SaaS).

What are you going to present at VivaTech? 

We are presenting two blade diagnostic tools: Clarity, developed with ENGIE Green, and Volta, which enjoyed its generous support. 
Clarity focuses on detecting deep faults within the blades using active thermography (i.e. with lasers). This patented solution, co-developed with ENGIE Green and the University of Reims, detects and measures the extent of invisible surface defects. Clarity’s pinpoint diagnosis avoids having the maintenance teams work on minor defects. 
As for Volta, this is a technology that uses drones to test the lightning passage for each wind turbine blade, making sure that they are properly protected. This patented solution was developed internally within SupAirVision. However, ENGIE Green gave us access to its machines for development testing and was our first major customer by listing Volta in its maintenance protocol. Volta’s benefit in the field is that it can replace rope access technicians – the only current alternative. This leads to significant time savings (30 minutes versus three hours) while improving teams’ safety.

How are your solutions innovative?

Volta is the first drone used specifically for testing lightning passages on wind turbine blades. It can touch every lightning “pad” at the end of the blade – these small metal parts the size of a 20-cent coin are the wind turbine’s lightning conductors – and give an instant ohmic resistance measurement. The drone is being fully automated to make it more accessible for less experienced pilots.
The other tool we will be presenting at Viva Technology, Clarity, is the first system to use pulsed dynamic thermography (with lasers) in the field, under real operating conditions. This technology is used to detect and assess the severity of defects (delamination, cracks, presence of water) in the fibres of each blade.

What do you hope to achieve from your participation? 

Viva Technology is a great showcase to let people know about our start-up and to highlight the technological potential of our tools. We hope to generate a buzz and leave with contacts from investors and prospects. We have four types of customer: wind turbine manufacturers, who have guaranteed their turbines for several years, sometimes under maintenance contracts; wind turbine operators and owners (these are not always the same people); and all the specialists involved in maintenance, inspection and repair.

What would you invent if you had one magic power?

A robot drone capable of doing everything around a wind turbine blade. We’re working on it... but sadly it's not magic!