In this changing world of the pandemic, PES was pleased to catch up, albeit remotely, with Geoffrey Vancassel, CEO and founder of Sterblue. This seemed very apt for a company that doesn’t need a physical presence to serve its clients. Their state-of-the-art software can save their clients huge amounts of money and be used independently.

PES: Hi Geoffrey, welcome back to PES Wind. Could you introduce our new readers to Sterblue?

Geoffrey Vancassel: At Sterblue we make energy infrastructure inspections easy with the support of our centralized software solutions. We help energy companies capture clean data using off-the-shelf drones and Sterblue mobile app, or upload satellite, smartphone and helicopter data into our cloud platform.

This data is then processed and analysed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and workflow automation. In the end, we output actionable information for the maintenance team, who can access a digital twin of their assets and flexible inspection reports in one single platform. There is a video available on our website.

PES: It’s been more than a year since the last time we talked. How has your business evolved?

GV: By working closely with major utilities such as ESB, AEP, Enedis and EDP, we’ve learned the importance of understanding our customers’ processes and helping them bring automation and digitization to their daily operations, making their jobs easier.

This allowed us to build an even more modular and flexible product, which can be tailored to unique use cases and connected with a large software ecosystem, including major players such as ESRI, SAP, Zapier, DJI, Parrot, Skydio, SpacePT, etc.

PES: We know your platform allows for managing multiple types of assets. Can
you tell us some of the advantages for the wind industry?

GV: With automatic flight trajectories, using the Sterblue app, one drone pilot can safely inspect up to 12 wind turbines per day with an inspection downtime between 20 and 35 min. This results in high resolution pictures, with defects visible up to a millimetre precision on our platform.

Our AI capabilities then allow for a fast image analysis which is then validated by a team of industry experts. Decision makers only need to access our reports and analytics to monitor asset health and generate clean energy more efficiently. You can learn more in our webinar here.