PES caught up with Graham Walker, Marshall Architect, at Marshall, as he shares insights into Lilypad, an innovative ecosystem of resident UAVs designed to provide wind farm operators with flexible and responsive remote inspections. We wanted to ask him how Lilypad leverages BVLOS technology to enhance turbine maintenance.
PES: Thanks for your time today, Graham. We’d like to discuss Lilypad and wondered whether you would mind briefly introducing it to our readers?
Graham Walker: Of course. Lilypad is an ecosystem of resident UAVs providing safe and scalable remote inspection services for wind farm assets. Lilypad UAVs are tasked by a remote pilot to inspect turbine blades using beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) technology. The remote pilot is based at an onshore ground control station.
For wind farm operators, Lilypad aims to provide flexible and responsive asset inspections, enabling earlier identification of faults. This gives them the opportunity to plan maintenance accordingly and increase turbine uptime.
We haven’t stopped working since the last time we were featured in PES Wind! As we speak we are currently in final preparations for an extensive live demonstration of the ecosystem to show the value that it can offer wind farm operators.
