From Aerones:

Now, Aerones has developed a maintenance method for wind turbines – a cleaning method of wind turbine blades by Drone. Our new service aims to provide an effective, practical and economical alternative for cleaning the wind turbine blades using machinery adapted to the needs as well as technicians who are specialized in cleaning work by Automated Drone.

A lot of factors could provoke the airfoil break of the blades: snow, ice, pollution, humidity, dust, insects, etc. It is known that a good maintenance of wind turbines and, specially, of the blades can increase the efficiency as much as 20% or even as much as 100% in case of frost or snow on its blades.

The maintenance of these wind turbines is something assumed in a wind turbine operational cost, even though the actual methods are very slow, expensive and involve a high risk for the personnel.

Depending on the size of blades and the wind conditions, Aerones could clean or de-ice 30 blades (10 turbines) in one day with full efficiency and no component spoilage.

Read more and see more from Aerones on YouTube

Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.