Shore

To accelerate the application of technology for sustainable mobility.

The challenge

Offshore assets, such as wind turbines, require recurrent inspections to carry out maintenance and ensure operation. These inspections require an enormous amount of transportation to and from applications using crew transfer vessels and/or dynamically positioned boats. These operations are excessive in terms of cost and in terms of emission, when one only requires images of the offshore assets.

The solution

We envision a shore-based drone that flies unmanned to an application, inspects it, and then returns to the shore. This unique type of inspection leads to lower prices because of reduced personnel and vessel cost, safer operations because of less personnel deployed offshore, and faster inspections because of reduced preparation and travel times. By integrating hydrogen fuel cell technology with drone systems, the operational range and the hover endurance (i.e. the time it can hold still to carry out an inspection) of drones is greatly extended. This development of sustainable technology enables a cost-effective operation of inspections, based onshore.