Energy company Ørsted has partnered with FlyingBasket and Skylift UAV on the UK’s first large-scale offshore drone delivery operation. According to a press release from Skylift UAV, the six-and-a-half-week project “completed more than 600 drone flights, transporting 38.1 tons of equipment to over 400 producing wind turbines across the Hornsea 1 & 2 wind farms on England’s east coast and Walney 1 & 2 in the Irish Sea.”

For the operation, the partners deployed FlyingBasket’s FB3 heavy-lift cargo drones, which “delivered loads averaging 70 kg directly from a supply vessel to turbine nacelles over 100 meters above sea level.”

Skylifit UAV said that the drone-based effort reduced delivery times from hours to minutes and that the UAVs were able to complete “up to 30 trips per day and reaching a record 40 deliveries in a single day. The company also said that “with some turbines located up to 75 miles offshore,” the project represented “the largest offshore wind drone delivery program to date.”

The program, Skylift reported, resulted in an overall reduction in emissions, a ten-fold increase in cost effectiveness over traditional methods, and increased worker safety, as “conventional operations expose workers to 50 minutes of drop zone activity for every lift, but drones have cut that to just one minute, massively lowering risk while maintaining productivity.”

Source: Press Release