DNV-Aligned Blade Inspections

Drone Wind Farm Surveys.

Compare quotes from specialist UK drone operators for blade and tower inspections — erosion, lightning damage, and cracking identified in hours, with no rope teams, no shutdown costs, and no lost yield.

“Every drone pilot on this network is personally vetted by me — insurance, qualifications, flight history.”

Peter Leslie · Founder & GVC Drone Pilot

Trusted by site managers & agencies across the UK

Need turbines inspected?

Post your details to compare quotes from wind-specialist drone pilots.

Hanging a rope team off a rotor is madness.

Wind farm owners, OEMs, and O&M contractors still stop turbines and hang IRATA crews off blades when a drone can fly the same inspection in 20 minutes. Drones rewrite the economics of blade CBM.

Shutdown & Rope Costs

Stopping a 3MW turbine for a rope-access inspection costs thousands in lost ROC/CfD per shift, plus the IRATA crew day rate. A drone completes a per-blade inspection in 20–30 minutes of parked rotor time.

Leading-Edge Erosion

Leading-edge erosion, lightning strikes, and trailing-edge cracking degrade AEP long before they are visible from the nacelle camera. Drone imagery catches them at sub-millimetre resolution and feeds them into CBM triggers.

Rope-Team Exposure

Working at 100m+ above ground or offshore sea-state is expensive risk to carry. A drone removes the rope team from the blade entirely while delivering imagery at resolutions beyond what a roped surveyor can see.

Blade inspection is not for a weekend drone pilot.

By Peter Leslie, Founder & GVC Drone Pilot

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Flying a drone within metres of a 75m blade in coastal wind and variable updrafts is specialist work. Without the right operational procedures, a weekend drone pilot will either crash the aircraft into the blade or miss the defect entirely.

Every wind survey on this network is flown by drone operators with blade-specific operational authorisations, DNV-aligned reporting templates, and — where required — GWO offshore certification. They carry £5M+ public liability as standard.

The result is a defect catalogue that OEM warranty teams, lenders' TAs, and O&M contractors accept straight off the disk.

DNV-Aligned & GWO Optional

CAA OA & £5M Public Liability

Deliverables your CBM team can action.

Our network operators deliver survey-grade outputs ready for OEM warranty, lenders' technical advisors, and in-house condition-based maintenance workflows.

Per-Blade Defect Catalogue

Every defect is pinned to blade (A/B/C), surface (PS/SS/LE/TE), and radial position. Each finding is classified by DNV severity, photographed, and cross-referenced to the raw image frame.

Blade Orthographics

Stitched orthos of each blade's pressure, suction, leading, and trailing faces. Measure erosion depth, chord-wise damage, and lightning pitting directly from the file.

CBM Triggers

Reports feed into the CBM register: which blades are trending toward S3/S4 severity, which need repair at the next calm-weather window, and which are safe to run for another campaign.

Book your wind farm survey in 3 steps.

We connect you with blade-specialist drone pilots, instantly.

Describe the Site

Tell us the site location, number of turbines, OEM/model, and whether this is an end-of-warranty, post-storm, or routine campaign. Takes under two minutes.

Compare Specialists

We route your brief to blade-qualified wind drone operators in your region. You receive competitive quotes with output formats and turnaround times.

Inspect & Report

Your drone pilot coordinates with the site SCADA team, flies each WTG, and delivers a packaged report with per-blade defect catalogue, orthos, and CBM triggers.

Start Your Project Brief

Saving drone operators six figures in shutdown cost.

See how wind farm owners, OEM warranty teams, and O&M contractors rely on drone wind surveys through our network.

"We had a 14-turbine site needing end-of-warranty blade inspection. The IRATA quote was £92k and three weeks on site. The drone team did every WTG in four days for a fraction of the cost and gave us a DNV-aligned defect catalogue the OEM accepted in full."

Hamish F.

Wind Asset Manager, Inverness

"After the winter storms we needed a rapid post-lightning inspection on three WTGs. The drone pilot was on site within 48 hours, identified two receptors with damage, and gave us CBM triggers in the O&M system by the end of the week."

Eilidh M.

O&M Engineer, Aberdeen

"Our lenders' TA wanted DNV-severity scoring on every blade at refinancing. The drone report gave us exactly that, with per-blade orthos and erosion depths that survived technical due diligence without a single follow-up question."

Bryn T.

Renewables Finance, Swansea

Wind Farm Survey FAQ

Technical questions on BVLOS/VLOS, offshore operations, and DNV reporting.

Are blade inspections flown VLOS or BVLOS?

Most onshore blade inspections are flown VLOS with the drone pilot repositioning between WTGs. For remote or large offshore sites, drone operators with CAA BVLOS approval can fly from a vessel or single onshore vantage point. We match your site to an drone operator with the correct authorisations.

Can you survey offshore wind farms?

Yes. Drone operators with GWO certification, CTV-based launch procedures, and offshore CAA authorisations can mobilise to UK offshore wind farms. Sea state and visibility are the main constraints; the drone itself can inspect a full WTG in 25–40 minutes.

Do you use DNV severity scoring?

Yes. Reports align with DNV-ST-0376 conventions for blade damage categorisation (S1–S5). Each defect is scored, photographed, and cross-referenced against turbine ID, blade ID, surface, and radial position so findings flow directly into OEM warranty and CBM systems.

Do I get raw imagery as well as the report?

Yes. Every brief includes the per-blade defect catalogue, the blade orthos, the CBM trigger list, and the full raw image set (typically 400–800 50MP photos per WTG). Files are delivered via secure cloud link within 5–10 working days depending on fleet size.