Artificial intelligence enables the future of renewable energy

Artificial intelligence

By Catalina Tobar, Unleash live

The desire to do things right and for humanity to live our lives in a way that is less destructive for the environment has been around for decades, but in the past years it’s gained even more momentum, it is unquestionable that the need for us to live more sustainable lives is at a leading position on the global agenda.

Today, renewable energy sources make up 26% of the world’s electricity, and according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) that’s expected to reach 30% by 2024. Many organisations around the world have joined collaborative efforts with the goal of achieving a more sustainable future. For example, the state of Victoria announced recently the allocation of $540 million to the development of six

renewable energy hubs across the state. However, experts state that the renewables industry needs to grow even faster if the world wants to avoid “the unmanageable global warming” all scientists talk about. Here is where digitalisation comes in, to transform the renewable energy sector with technology such as artificial intelligence for renewable energy projects to deliver more reliable and efficient outcomes.

Wind farms, solar farms, powerlines and pipelines are largely commoditised infrastructures, and stakeholders are looking for ways to improve their margins, turning to video analytics platforms such as Unleash live.

Unleash live is an A.I. cloud-based platform that provides advanced technical and digital analysis assessments to renewables asset manufacturers, operators, and owners to inform decisions around risk mitigation, productivity improvement, and lifetime extension for wind farms, solar farms and powerlines.

Why renewable energy operators are going digital

Renewables assets such as wind turbines or solar panels have a life expectancy of approximately 30 years, which means that the first generation of these are starting to age and, as a result, maintenance costs increase, margins start to reduce and the safety of the operators decreases. Moreover, asset downtime and under-performance is one of the main challenges in this industry. For example when a wind turbine experiences non-expected operational issues, wind turbine inspectors have to be sent to climb the wind turbine on a rope, take pictures of the turbine, then send those pictures to an engineer to diagnose the issues, which then he reports back to the wind turbine operators so they can fix them. This whole process is timeconsuming, high-risk, weather-dependent and costly. Additionally, anomalies in the assets often go undetected until they’re discovered in one of the scheduled maintenance runs, which is extremely detrimental to the asset’s lifetime value and productivity.

Unleash live has forecasted that their clients will reduce their inspection costs by up to 40% across the asset lifetime

Most energy providers are aware that their processes can be optimised and are continuously seeking more cost-effective maintenance practices. However, having to completely re-design their processes and workflows seems to be more of a hindrance than helpful. The good news is companies like Unleash live have designed a solution to deliver computer vision into their customer’s workflows, allowing them to access real-time operational data and develop advanced analytics capabilities to support their decision making.

Digitalisation in the field

Unleash live has significant experience in building world-class aerial A.I. object recognition, classification, and flow models. This has allowed them to efficiently build, train and implement highperformance models with a scalable architecture to optimise the inspection process for the renewables sector assets such as wind turbines and solar panels.

Wind farm

Unleash live Windfarm A.I. is a complete solution for companies that engage in wind farm construction, maintenance, or service. It provides a complete workflow for capturing, storing, analysing

and sharing visual maintenance data and insights. It’s a centralised location that integrates the data captured and generates reports on workflows.

This enables experts to:

- collaborate from the field or the office - recognise issues - categorise insights

- build a digital passport of the asset.

Allowing the users to improve their asset productivity and reduce time-to-insight, from anywhere. The images below show one of Unleash live’s customers (Hugo Velasquez from Zenobe Energy) performing a real-time inspection of a wind turbine, located 1,078 km away, all from the comfort of the office.

To eliminate the manual time-consuming analysis, Unleash live trained their A.I. algorithm to identify up to 9 different types of blade faults with high accuracy. It is also able to predict maintenance issues and therefore mitigate the probability of risks. Additionally, the users of this solution are able to generate alerts when certain events/

faults are recognised, as well as monitor their asset’s performance for compliance and valuation purposes. This solution was developed with the goal of facilitating a clean and sustainable path for cities and governments to achieve their sciencebased emission reduction targets.

Solar panels

Conventional solar plant inspection methods are mostly done manually, which as a result doesn’t allow photovoltaic defects to be detected accurately, making the reporting process inaccurate, complex and time-consuming. However, it’s been proven that drones can detect malfunctioning panels quicker than a field crew on foot. According to T&D World, inspecting solar panels with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) saves on average $US1.2K per megawatt in costs and is 95% more efficient than manual inspections.

they’re able to obtain real-time insights in order for them to be able to predict issues...

What makes Unleash live’s Solar A.I. solution different from other drone inspection providers is that it turns real-time data into insights. The platform is integrated to Unleash live’s customer’s workflows, delivering a continuous real-time end-to-end visual inspection process, which allows the users the opportunity to schedule fully autonomous drone flights, while automating the aerial data collection process and reporting systems. Lastly, they’re able to obtain real-time insights in order for them to be able to predict issues and incidents before they happen.

The power of data

While the above is more theoretical, one thing we all agree on is that successful industry players are the ones that optimise their processes, and turn their data into insights, which is exactly what Unleash live’s customers achieve.

This is possible with the 6 different components of Unleash live’s A.I. analytics:

1. A.I. Analytics – Extract key insights faster at a lower cost

2. VR & 3D Experiences – Generate immersive VR environments, orthomosaics, point clouds for clear asset quality assessment

3. Digital Passport – Access, search, store and review your media from one central location

4. Live Collaboration – Collaborate in real time, remotely

5. Inspection Optimisation – Plan and execute regular missions

6. Integration and reporting – Visualise your data trends for faster decision-making

Conclusion

As the world becomes more reliant on renewable energy, organisations will need accurate mechanisms to both manage and leverage these, and digitisation is the driving force to make this possible. The examples above from Unleash live reflect how A.I. is allowing environmentally focused organisations to increase their potential for renewable energy operations to be effectively operated, whilst remaining economically viable and reducing the resources required. Therefore, at this point in time, artificial intelligence is the most reliable and effective way for humanity to make a sustainable future possible, now.

About us

Unleash live is a video analytics platform combining vision and A.I. analytics to remove the guesswork from running remote infrastructure operations. Essentially, we measure reality for large-scale enterprises.

Citations: Sophie, V. (2020).Victoria budgets $540m to develop six new Renewable Energy Zones.