Not all instances of leading edge erosion and blade surface damage warrant immediate attention. Nevertheless, many operators and owners tend to overspend on repairs that may not significantly enhance power production. Enter Denmark-based PowerCurve, creators of a robust software tool that leverages existing drone data to precisely evaluate a turbine's power production potential. The AeroVista API has now been made accessible to drone inspection companies and operators across the globe. Drone inspection metadata is seamlessly uploaded to the cloud, where AeroVista skillfully interprets blade damage and harnesses cutting-edge CFD algorithms to pinpoint areas on the blades where power efficiency is compromised. The outcome is a user-friendly heat map illustrating blade damage, accompanied by an accurate assessment of the Annual Energy Production (AEP). This breakthrough empowers owners and operators to strategize their repair efforts, ensuring maximum power recovery. Join Uptime host Allen Hall as he engages in an insightful conversation with PowerCurve's CTO, Nicholas Gaudern, to delve into the fascinating details of AeroVista.

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PowerCurve - https://powercurve.dkPardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Leading edge erosion is a massive power losing problem for most wind farms. Almost every wind turbine blade that has been in service more than two years has some level of leading edge erosion. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with our guest, Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve.

In this episode, we are discussing leading edge erosion, how it reduces average energy production, and when to address it for maximum revenue generation. And just a brief background on PowerCurve. PowerCurve designs, manufactures and installs power upgrades for wind turbine blades that help their clients make their wind projects more profitable.

PowerCurve's Technology has been thoroughly tested and validated, and they continue to work closely with universities to refine it even further. And the upgrades have been installed on blades worldwide. Nicholas, welcome to the program.

Nicholas Gaudern:  Hi Allen. Really nice to be back talking to you. 

Allen Hall: So you have some new software tools at your disposal, and anybody that knows PowerCurve knows you guys are really good at aerodynamics to understand how blades produce power.

You wanna, you wanna describe what this little software breakthrough 

Nicholas Gaudern: is? Yeah, I'd love to. So, so what I want to talk about today is, is our new tool that we're calling a. It's it's an a p i, you can call it, it does something and you'll get some really insightful data back. Maybe just take a, a step backwards.

It's all about taking a, a data driven and an engineering driven approach to understanding the performance losses that you will get from damages and particularly leading edge erosion on a blade. So, We're about modeling those losses and telling you how you can deal with it. Yeah, 

Allen Hall: because there's a lot of information on the internet today link.

You see a lot of it on LinkedIn talking about leaning edge erosion and, and how you should repair it and it should be repaired and how quickly should be repaired. Those are really interesting data points. Right. But I think the real critical decision is if you should repair it and how. How, how far how many years can you wait?