Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy creates a more sustainable future with wind power, AI and the cloud

With towers as high as 120 meters (390 feet) and rotor blades that span the height of a 22-story building, industrial wind turbines are challenges to inspect and maintain.

Traditionally, a wind turbine blade inspection required technicians to rappel down a stopped turbine in remote areas – sometimes at sea – to take pictures of cracks and faults in a turbine’s blades. Or it involved someone on land taking pictures with a telescope and camera. The work was often time-consuming and challenging.

But a year and a half ago, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, a global leader in the wind power industry, transformed the process with autonomous drones and a digital solution called Hermes. The aircraft capture high-resolution images quickly, while the solution analyzes images for potential blade damage, all resulting in safer, faster and more accurate inspections.

Based in Spain, the company is now further improving the solution by migrating it to Microsoft Azure and infusing it with Azure AI to process image recognition. The digital enhancements will enable Siemens Gamesa to streamline blade inspections even more, in its mission to make renewable energy more affordable and the future more sustainable.

“Hermes is taking a huge leap forward with the collaboration with Microsoft,” says Christian Sonderstrup, service chief digital officer at Siemens Gamesa, which has installed wind power technologies in 90 countries. “AI, cloud and big data enable us to move to the next level of performance, in terms of innovation and in lowering the levelized cost of renewable energy.”*

The drones, which will inspect 1,700 turbines this year, are fast, precise photographers, capturing about 400 images of a turbine’s three blades in 20 minutes. The images form an overview of blade condition and needed repairs, but the need to manually sort and stitch them has been a challenge. The laborious task was recently evident in a large inspection project involving 100,000 photos.

“We had someone looking into every one of these photos, and then every finding of a severe fault needed to be evaluated again by an engineer,” says Anne Katrine Karner-Gotfredsen, Siemens Gamesa manager of product integrity and warranty management in the company’s blade program.

Integrating Azure AI services will greatly speed up the process, with image recognition that can stitch images into an accurate model of an entire rotor in 34 seconds. The same job with manual stitching takes four to six hours and could lead to errors. AI tools can differentiate blades from water, sky and other irrelevant elements; distinguish cracks and faults from, say, bird droppings; integrate drone location and camera zoom data for precise stitching; and classify faults by type and severity.

“To review all the photos is a huge task,” says Karner-Gotfredsen. “Before Hermes, it was quite tedious to categorize and store all the data in a place that everyone can access. The more we can make it an automated process, the easier it is for us to work with the data.” Faster, accurate inspections mean less downtime of turbines, earlier detection of faults, better predictive maintenance and fewer costly repairs – all contributing to more affordable wind power.

For Karner-Gotfredsen, the cloud will also help optimize projects like one she managed last year, involving a customer’s inspection of several wind parks. The data was difficult to share among Siemens Gamesa, the customer and a third-party reviewer, requiring Karner-Gotfredsen to send and receive it on a hard drive several times, along with cumbersome spreadsheets in email.

“The fact that we now can have the data going directly into Hermes with the cloud, without us having to carry hard drives, and having the data automatically sorted and stitched, saves us many people hours,” she says. “AI is augmenting the work our employees are doing, allowing them to focus on their core competencies.”

AI-powered blade analyses are also part of Siemens Gamesa’s goal to provide complete, 360-degree digital coverage of customers’ turbines. And they’re part of a digital strategy that focuses on productivity, digital extensions of current business offerings and new digital businesses. As Siemens Gamesa advances the strategy, it’s using Microsoft 365 and Azure as its IT foundation for developing new innovations that are scalable, robust and insightful.

“We aspire to be the digital leader in renewable energy,” says Sonderstrup. “AI, the cloud and big data are enablers of that journey.”

Microsoft collaborates with Telecom Egypt to extend its global cloud network to Egypt

Microsoft Corp. and Telecom Egypt announced their collaboration to extend Microsoft’s cloud network to Egypt. Telecom Egypt will provide low-latency connectivity into and across Egypt to help enhance performance and increase reliability for customers of Microsoft services. The partnership will increase Microsoft’s reach to the large Egyptian market in addition to improving connectivity across North Africa and the Middle East.

Microsoft’s global network is one of the largest and most innovative in the world. It connects Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure of more than 100 datacenters, 135 edge node locations and more than 100,000 miles of fiber and undersea cable systems to deliver Microsoft services to customers. The new point of presence in Egypt will benefit from a direct connection to Microsoft’s global infrastructure to enhance the delivery of numerous services for customers. Microsoft’s network investment will increase capacity and use the latest in network optimization for the delivery of Microsoft services in Egypt.

“Through our collaboration with Telecom Egypt, we are extending Microsoft’s global network in Egypt and improving connectivity across North Africa and the Middle East,” said Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president, Azure Networking, Microsoft. “We are continuously investing to increase the size, speed, reliability and intelligence of Microsoft’s global network to help enable the digital transformation of organizations and enterprises locally and abroad.”

Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Amr Talaat, minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt, said, “Our commitment to the industry comes in line with the government’s Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt Vision 2030. Egypt is spearheading a promising digital transformation strategy that will transform the society and the economy. We value collaboration that aims to empower local enterprises and accelerate transformation for business advancement.” The Minister also, on the occasion of this new relationship, emphasized that “Egypt is capitalizing on its unique geographic location, which makes it a hub for digital businesses and datacenter activity due to the strong presence of submarine cables passing through both the Red and Mediterranean seas.”

Telecom Egypt’s global network was built over the years through investments in consortiums and private international submarine cable systems. Its reach and position as an international hub with tens of terabits per second lit capacity makes it the partner of choice for content providers. Egypt’s distinctive geographic location on the Red and Mediterranean seas has enabled Telecom Egypt to connect more than 11 cable systems from the east and 13 from the west linked with the Red-Med Corridor consisting of 7 diversified highly reliable routes across Egypt.

“We are pleased to partner with Microsoft as it represents one of the first steps toward our strategic digital transformation plan,” said Adel Hamed, chief operating officer, Telecom Egypt. “Telecom Egypt’s geographical position and its digital infrastructure will enable major cloud providers such as Microsoft to enhance their reach to consumers and enterprises in Egypt as well as reach other markets.”

Khaled Abdel Kader, general manager, Microsoft Egypt said: “Microsoft is committed to providing world-class cloud services to enable and accelerate the digital transformation of organizations, businesses and people in Egypt. Our collaboration with Telecom Egypt and Microsoft’s investment in the country will further empower Egypt to achieve more through Microsoft services.”

The new enhanced network presence in Egypt will connect via Microsoft’s global network to transatlantic and trans-Arabian paths, which will improve connectivity across North Africa and the Middle East, including enhancing connectivity to the new Microsoft cloud regions in development in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

About Telecom Egypt

Telecom Egypt is the first total telecom operator in Egypt providing all telecom services to its customers including fixed and mobile voice and data services. Telecom Egypt has a long history serving Egyptian customers for over 160 years maintaining a leadership position in the Egyptian telecom market by offering its enterprise and consumer customers the most advanced technology, reliable infrastructure solutions and the widest network of submarine cables. Aside from its mobile operation “WE”, the company owns a 45% stake in Vodafone Egypt.

Pass Your Microsoft Certification Exams In First Attempt