Drone VS. Rover Inspections, AI Crack Monitoring

Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Philip Totaro, and Joel Saxum discuss the evolution of wind turbine blade inspections, from external drones to internal rovers. They debate the potential of AI in predicting damage progression and managing repair priorities, with Rosemary emphasizing the complexity of crack propagation in composites. Joel highlights Top 7's innovative drone technology for detecting lightning protection system faults in blades, as featured in PES Wind magazine. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: On the mean streets of Lowville, New York, Phil that's your neck of the woods. The local Kraft Heinz plant has reclaimed the Guinness World Record for the largest cheesecake. Tipping the scales at a whopping 15, 008 pounds. Yes, that's right. That's seven and a half tons of creamy goodness. Joel Saxum: I absolutely love cheesecake. My brother loves cheesecake so much that's what he had at his wedding. He had a smorgasbord of different kinds of cheesecake that you could pick from. Allen Hall: They broke the record, almost double the record that was held from a team from Russia. So here we go. Now we're back into the 1980s. Olympic hockey Philip Totaro: exit no that's great that's good that's a good thing we should be world domination in cheesecake size Allen Hall: and Philip Totaro: wait. Allen Hall: Yeah why did we get an invite joel i don't understand we should've been top of the list to come to lowville. Philip Totaro: That's yeah that's what i'm saying like did they pass it out to everybody in town like how do you eat a cheesecake seven tons of cheesecake. Allen Hall: They donated to local food bank is what they did after everybody had a slice or two or three. But 15, 000 pounds of cheesecake. What's that in metric tons, Phil? Come on. I need a sense of this for the Europeans in our audience. 6. 8 metric tons. That's a lot of metric tons, but this, these are the things you got to keep your eyes open for, right? So if they're going for a world record. And anything food related, they need to be calling the Uptime Podcast and at least give us a heads up so we can plan our travel accordingly, because this cheesecake thing seems like we missed out. I'm Alan Hall and here are this week's top news stories. In our first story, Vestas has secured its largest onshore wind project to date in Japan. The company has received a 134 megawatt order from Invenergy. for the Inaniwa Wind Energy Center. The order includes 32 V117 4. 2 megawatt wind turbines and a 20 year service agreement. Deliveries are expected to begin in the first half of 2027 with commissioning planned for Q1 2028. Moving to Spain, Windar has started preparatory work to construct a new monopile factory. The facility will have the capacity to manufacture monopiles up to 12. 5 meters in diameter, 3, 500 tons, and 130 meters in length. With an annual capacity of 100 to 120 monopiles, the factory aims to supply wind farms in the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, as well as the East Coast of the United States. In a significant development for the Mediterranean region, nine Southern European Union member countries have pledged to turn the area into a renewable energy hub. Officials from Cyprus, Slovenia, Malta, Croatia, Greece, Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain are focusing on harnessing offshore wind and solar energy. They aim to set up a joint renewable energies project across borders and ...