Page 52 - North American Clean Energy March/April 2019 Issue

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MARCH•APRIL2019 /// www.nacleanenergy.com
wind power
AI and the Automated Future of the Wind Industry
by Chris Shroyer
As wind energy production picks up speed, owners and operators are nding themselves hyper-focused on managing infrastructure e ciently. Blades are a major component driving turbine e ciency. Damaged or worn blades lead to signi cant e ciency loss, so regular inspections have become critical. But with inspections comes data. Massive amounts of data.
Whether it is a large utility provider managing a eet of hundreds, or a private company with several turbines or farms, owners and operators are buried in data. Processing data from a single inspection can take weeks, consuming valuable time that should be spent focusing on critical areas of generating revenue.
ere’s a new technology in the wind industry with
a unique solution to data management and analysis challenges: arti cial intelligence (AI). Industry leaders have been perfecting automated, machine learning technology developed speci cally for the wind industry. is revolutionary AI breakthrough is cutting data analysis time by 75 percent or more. Let that sink in.
AI is game-changing technology that creates e ciencies and expands brainpower, giving teams extra time to focus on strategy or growth.
Delegate Your Data Analysis
Sifting through hundreds – sometimes thousands – of inspection images takes human teams several days or more. Categorizing, analyzing, and transforming this data into intelligence that in uences maintenance and repair decisions, takes a signi cant amount of time and resources; the nal result may still be lacking in consistency.
When data analysis is automated by AI, time spent in front of a computer screen is greatly reduced, freeing teams to refocus their energy on strategic priorities. is groundbreaking AI can process any type of image data, whether new data captured via drone or ground-scope, or legacy data that’s backlogged and still waiting to be processed. AI is always learning - with each data set, it gets better at detecting and reporting anomalies.
Trust the Accuracy of Your Data
Regardless if you have the most talented team of analysts, human errors are unavoidable. A certain level of human fatigue exists when processing large amounts of data. Even the best can have their eyes glaze over after unending hours of analysis. It’s human nature. at
Proprietary AI is able to extract damage and locate anomalies in less than optimal capture conditions.