Advances on the integration of transport drones into offshore wind farms

Abstract

The rising demand for renewable energy production capabilities following Europe’s green energy revolution is expected to lead to a large expansion of offshore wind farms (OWF) into the exclusive economic zones of North and Baltic Sea. Automated cargo drone delivery of maintenance and repair materials could significantly lower the high costs of wind farm maintenance. For efficient and safe operations, drones must be properly integrated into the maritime domain and the OWF. The Upcoming Drone Windfarms (UDW) project between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the energy provider Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) targets several aspects of these central challenges. This paper presents the main concept for a fictitious drone transport mission to OWF Hohe See, operated by EnBW in the North Sea, which acts as reference scenario to develop the integration and operation concept as there is no model drone transport service available today. The presented work focuses on the interaction between the drone and the wind farm’s infrastructure as this is expected to be one key element to benefit from the automation potential of drone usage. For the interaction, appropriate concepts for communication were developed, implemented, and eventually demonstrated in a simulated transport mission in an onshore wind farm. The paper contributes to this topic with the identification of necessary infrastructure extensions to enable a reliable communication, the interaction between the drone and the wind farm, and a summary of shared information. Also, the technical setup of the flight tests and main findings are presented.