Inside Aerones’ Robotics Innovation Hub – The Future of Wind Turbine Maintenance

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen and Joel flew to Riga, Latvia to meet with Dainis Kruze and Greta Krumina from Aerones. In this exclusive interview, they discuss how Aerones is transforming wind turbine maintenance with advanced robotics and AI, from lightning protection systems testing to leading edge repairs and more. Allen and Joel get a tour of their new manufacturing space and offices, where the team is at work. This is a glimpse into the future of renewable energy maintenance. Visit Aerones' website: https://aerones.com/ Follow Greta and Dainis on LinkedIn! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with Joel Saxum, and we are in Riga, Latvia with Aerones. We're actually at Aerones with Dainis Kruze and Greta Krumina. And we came all the way to Latvia because we wanted to learn where you guys are at. And obviously this repair season has been pretty busy and we've seen you all over the world. But we haven't seen the latest innovations and robots and where this new facility is. Joel Saxum: This thing here. Allen Hall: Yeah, so you guys moved into a new facility. Yes. This year. Yes. And we're only showing part of the facility. A small part. A very small part. A very small part, this is the manufacturing facility where all the robot manufacturing happens at in the design process. But there's another building next door, which is six stories. And you're four of those stories. And they're full of engineers and technicians and customer support people. Yeah, so there's just a lot going on in Latvia at the moment. I think we, the thing that I wanted to come see, and we traveled, I don't know, two, three thousand miles to get here, was to understand where you guys are at. And how far you have advanced from when I think we first met, which is probably three years ago now. There's a lot that has happened. The robot designs have matured greatly. Everything has Yeah, the number of services provided is It's wild. It's crazy. Joel Saxum: You walked us around yesterday, and we just This is for this, and this is for that, and this is another service we do here, and this is a special project we're working on here, and this is this. Oh man, this is so if you thought of Aerones a few years ago as a company that does some robotic tower cleaning and that was cool, you've got to see this. Because what you can see in the camera right now is, like Allen said, the manufacturing facility, behind that wall is a complete machine shop, CNC, lathes. 5 axis machines, welding, testing, all the above, and you're just seeing one building here behind us. Two stories of offices, a rapid prototyping room over here with 15 3D printers and all kinds of people running around in full Aerones gear, getting stuff done. Allen Hall: Yeah, and hats. Joel Saxum: We're talking here, why don't you guys give us a rundown of where you're at. Dainis Kruze: Oh yeah In the last three years we've done a lot. The team, Aerones has done a lot. We've built what we dreamt to build. We've done what we what we wanted to do. And like finally we are maturing into a growth stage company and not the startup anymore. In the very beginning we understood that like just with the cleaning or just with lightning protection system tests it's not going to fly. So there are a lot more problems on the blades and a lot more problems on the turbines...