Ørsted and Skyports Trial Cargo Drone Deliveries to Offshore Wind Turbines

Ørst­ed and Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices have com­plet­ed a four-week tri­al using large car­go drones to trans­port main­te­nance equip­ment to tur­bines at the Hornsea 2 off­shore wind farm in the North Sea.

The project eval­u­at­ed whether drones could sup­port rou­tine main­te­nance oper­a­tions by deliv­er­ing tools, spare parts and mate­ri­als direct­ly from a ser­vice oper­a­tions ves­sel (SOV) to indi­vid­ual tur­bines. The com­pa­nies said the approach could reduce ves­sel move­ments, low­er oper­a­tional risks and improve tur­bine avail­abil­i­ty.

Each main­te­nance kit weighed between 55kg and 65kg and con­tained equip­ment pre­pared for spe­cif­ic tasks. The kits were packed into car­go bags and flown to tur­bines before tech­ni­cians arrived. Once work was com­plet­ed, the drone returned the bags and equip­ment to the SOV.

A key ele­ment of the tri­al was the intro­duc­tion of an auto­mat­ed car­go han­dling sys­tem. Sky­ports devel­oped a load-col­lec­tion method using an auto­mat­ic hook attached to the drone, remov­ing the need for per­son­nel to man­u­al­ly con­nect car­go before flight. The com­pa­nies said this reduced han­dling require­ments and increased the lev­el of automa­tion in the deliv­ery process.

The tri­al involved teams from avi­a­tion, safe­ty, ware­hous­ing and off­shore oper­a­tions, work­ing with­in the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Authority’s reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work. Flights were planned and mon­i­tored to account for weath­er, air­space and off­shore oper­at­ing con­di­tions.

The pro­gramme also includ­ed a mile­stone beyond-visu­al-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight with­in the wind farm. Dur­ing this oper­a­tion, the drone trav­elled approx­i­mate­ly 4km while being coor­di­nat­ed and mon­i­tored from a spe­cial­ist ves­sel.

Ørst­ed said the sys­tem was used to sup­port both planned main­te­nance and reac­tive tasks, enabling equip­ment to be deliv­ered quick­ly when required. Because tur­bines could con­tin­ue gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty dur­ing deliv­er­ies, the process also reduced the need for main­te­nance-relat­ed down­time. Drone deliv­er­ies may also help reduce man­u­al lift­ing by tech­ni­cians work­ing off­shore and decrease some ves­sel trips, poten­tial­ly low­er­ing fuel con­sump­tion and oper­at­ing costs.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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