Show notes
The spotlight today is on Romotioncam, a company with an inspection method that works while blades are in motion. René Harendt, CTO at Romotioncam, and Michael Stamm, a researcher from the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung in Germany, discuss this groundbreaking technology. Learn about innovations at the company, from a new 840 mm focal length camera to thermal imaging data, that will make inspections more helpful for operators.
Check out Michael's research at BAM! https://zenodo.org/records/14170341, https://www.bam.de/Content/EN/Projects/KI-Visir/KI-Visir.html
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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today we have two experts pioneering innovative wind turbine inspection methods. René Harent is the CTO of Romotioncam whose patented technology enables high res photography of operating wind turbines.
And Michael Stamm from Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, who specializes in thermographic inspection methods for wind turbines. Together, they're combining visual and infrared imaging to revolutionize how we detect early stage blade issues. Rene and Michael, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.
Thank you. We have seen Romotioncam a number of times, and the technology is really good, Rene. I like it because the turbine continues to operate. As you take high quality images, the technology has evolved quite a bit from the last time I have seen it. Do you want to explain where you're at with Romotioncam today?
So
René Harendt: at the moment, we actually build up a fleet to scale up and to provide it to a bigger market. And yeah, I actually have a new prototype with A bigger focal length. So the actual system has a 500 millimeter focal length. The new system has an 840 millimeter, millimeter focal length. So that means that we can, even on higher turbines and bigger blades, because this is related to our distance to the turbines, we can provide GSDs like 0.
06 centimeter per pixel. So something up to 0. pixel.
Allen Hall: So in that kind of imaging resolution, you can detect all kinds of blade abnormalities.
René Harendt: Yes, even little hair cracks and stuff like this.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, because you're approaching what a drone can do, right? That's, even a couple of years ago, two millimeters per pixel, three millimeters per pixel is normal.
But now that one millimeter per pixel, a lot of times you'll see that in an RFP, right? When someone puts out, Hey, we're, we want inspections and they put it out to the market. One millimeter per pixel will be the standard, but you guys are offering this without actually having to stop the turbine. So your value add goes through the roof because you're keeping that production going.
René Harendt: That's true. And if you think about it with that, sometimes we add a distance of 160 meters, something like this and provide that kind of GSD. Yeah, this. Sometimes there are. That's amazing, yeah.
Allen Hall: So maybe, René, for those uninitiated, who are not familiar with Romotioncam, what are the fundamentals here?
How does this system work?
René Harendt: The easiest way is to go to our website and watch the video. I think this can explain. Everything. So go to romotioncam com and watch it here. But I'll try to explain it a little bit. So the key thing is that we're using one camera to track the whole rotor and the blades and a special tracking technology behind it, which is also patented.
Can detect the wingtips and can calculate the rotation speed and the position of the turbine and stuff like this. And then calculators and the kind of movement data for a pan tilt head. And we have the camera integrated into a pan tilt head that can follow the blade all the time. So that means even on high tip speeds, we can follow the Tip.
It's two fast cars driving next to each other. You literally can shake hands. And this is, this allows us for the camera to use low shutter speeds. And yeah, we can deal also with low light condition because we don't have to put the ISO too high and stuff like this. It's also weak. We Yeah, I can eliminate some photographic issues you would normally have if you're trying to freeze some motions.
Yeah.
Allen Hall: Now, the majority of the work you do is in Europe, but you were in the United States for a short while. Can you explain what kind of work you're doing
René Harendt: in Europe at the minute? So we are subcontractors, so we have a frame contact with RWE, so we're running out some inspections and, but we want to open the market a little bit more.
There is a plan for next year to open up an entity in the U. S. To be honest, at the moment, it's now a political situation. So we have to take a look what happened. And if it's, it's not that easy for us yet to come over to the U. S. It's not that we just saying, okay, we want to open an entity.
There's a lot of paperwork. We try to clarify now, but at the moment, the political situation is a little bit. Yeah, we don't really know. I think we have to wait. It could be more complicated, maybe more easier. Let's see what happens. Yeah, but the goal is to come to the US and open an entity there
Allen Hall: as
René Harendt: well.
Allen Hall: And the latest technology, and we talked several weeks ago now, that Romotioncam has been involved with, is on the thermal imaging side. And the first time I heard about this was a probably a year ago when we were in Amsterdam at one of the blade conferences and I was just blown away. You can take thermal imaging from a Romotioncam cam on the ground.
That's amazing. One. That's amazing. And then it was described what that camera and that technology could do. And this is where Michael comes in. Where Michael is our thermal imaging expert. And Michael, can you describe where you work at? Just to make sure I get the right label on it.
Michael Stamm: Yeah. Hi, I'm Michael.
I work at a research institute. So I'm definitely on the research side of this technology. And We are performing thermal imaging of operating wind turbines from the ground. And this is actually also where we met with Romotioncam, because it's really important to, for a proper interpretation of our thermal images, we really needed high resolution visual images.
And then we were just looking for somebody providing this simultaneously from the same point we were looking at. And then that was like the match with the RamoshiCAM. And now we just had a big measurement campaign where we tried to benchmark what is possible, where are we?
We are working on this, like BAM is working on this since, Something like seven years. And I know even when I have discussions with experts from the field, I know that even 15 years ago, people were already talking about thermal expression of rotor blades. So it's like not, really inherently new.
I just say like things develop, cameras develop, understanding develops, simulation develop. So we are, we are trying to get it where it's really useful for the industry.
Joel Saxum: Traditionally, we know in the wind turbine world, visual inspections via drone romotioncam as you guys are doing, it's fantastic.
Pairing that with Thermal. What exactly can you guys see? Are you trying to image and what, like what value are you trying to bring to the inspections?
Michael Stamm: I want to distinguish two physical phenomena, and I think it's really important to get this once clarified and then we can go to the. But there are different physical phenomenons that give you a thermal signature on your blade.
And you have to distinguish these signatures. And one of the signatures is flow, air flow. Turbulent flow has a higher heat exchange between air and blade than laminar flow. So you see the difference between laminar and turbulent flow, which for example, Helps you to characterize leading edge defects, which result in turbulent flow patterns.
That's the first point. And the second point is completely independent of the flow. It's really like the inner structure of the blade. It's like just a different thing to look into the things. The sun is rising, you see the entire blade gets warm, and wherever there is, for example, foam, balsa, air, it gets warmer faster.
Why? Because you just don't have that high heat capacity. Having a big part of CFRP of a few centimeters, it takes time to heat this up. And then, this honeycomb structure is warm already. And that's like the second physical phenomena. So you really have to distinguish. And then, definitely, You look for the application in this case, for example, with romotioncam we were really looking for this flow visualization.
Joel Saxum: And you're also can look for, and I think this is an important one, friction creates heat and, or a lack of friction can create a colder spot. And so it's more like you're looking on the blade. You're not looking for a specific temperature, right? We're not looking for, I want to see the spot. That's, 21.
2 degrees Celsius. I want to see the spots that are. 21. 2 and 21.