HOW CAN WE REPAIR BLADE EROSION AT THE RIGHT TIME; NOT TOO LATE, NOT TOO EARLY?
Leading-edge erosion is one of the most frequent and expensive maintenance problems in wind O&M. Yet most inspection and repair plans are still generic, barely adapted to the specific site or turbine. With ATENEA, CENER gives operator a tool to predict erosion for each site and turbine, so owners can get the repair timing right from a limited number of inspections.
Blade leading-edge erosion is not a minor issue, nor is it limited to specific locations: all wind farms, onshore and offshore, are exposed to rain and wind, the two agents continuously erode the leading edge throughout the asset’s useful life. And the trend is moving in the wrong direction: rotors are getting bigger, with higher tip speeds that accelerate wear; projects are moving to more demanding sites, with greater meteorological exposure; and climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent. All three factors point in the same direction: more erosion, faster.
Most of that cost is in maintenance: downtime, repeated repair campaigns over a 20-to-30-year life, and the cost of access, which multiplies in offshore. And the cost jumps once the surface erosion reaches the structural laminate, turning a simple coating repair into a much more expensive structural one.
The industry doesn’t ignore erosion. The problem is how it’s managed. Even with drones now standard and severity scales in use, inspection and maintenance planning still relies on fixed intervals and broad assumptions, only loosely tied to the real site (its actual rain – wind climate), the turbine technology, or how each machine is operated. So, the timing is wrong in both directions. Inspect or repair too late, and the damage has already reached the load-carrying structure, where repairs are costly and downtime is long. Act too early, and you throw away months of blade life that was still fine and spend an access budget you didn’t need yet.
The real gap isn’t the inspection itself, it’s that a one-off inspection is a snapshot, not a trajectory. It tells you a blade condition today, but not how fast the damage is progressing or when it will cross the structural threshold. And the timing problem gets harder because of how repairs actually happen. Access is weather-limited, so repairs are bundled into seasonal campaigns, with specialized teams and spare parts booked well in advance and, in offshore, with vessels and cranes too. That forces owners to commit to which turbines to repair before they really know each blade’s condition. Within a single farm, turbines don’t erode equally: their operation and exposure make some far worse than others. What the decision needs is a trajectory, and a way to know where to look.
To close this gap, CENER has developed ATENEA, a tool that predicts blade erosion for each design under its real operating conditions. ATENEA delivers value on two levels:
- Right-time intervention – a trajectory, not a snapshot: rather than a single reading of current condition, ATENEA estimates how the damage progresses over time and how much usable life is left, so each campaign arrives at the right moment: making the most of the blade’s remaining life, but before the damage reaches the structure.
- Fleet-level targeting at lower cost: ATENEA points to which turbines and blades are most at risk under their specific site and operation, telling owners where to look instead of inspecting everything, and extends the findings from a few inspected blades to others in similar conditions, so a small, low-cost inspection effort becomes a fleet-wide read.
ATENEA combines two physical layers: an Impact model, which links blade-tip speed with the rain at the site, its droplet sizes and impact velocity, and a Damage model, which describes how the coating and material wear down over time. What makes ATENEA’s output trustworthy is that the Impact and Damage models have been calibrated with real data from 8 different locations, so it is anchored to what is really happening on site, not to a generic assumption.
ATENEA structure: four data sources feed the Impact and Damage models, with the inspection evidence calibrating the damage model.
ATENEA draws on data owners already generate (turbine physics models, SCADA, weather data, and inspection evidence), and once recalibrated, it extends that anchored result to turbines under similar conditions. It is built to state-of-the-art engineering standards, yet automated and ready to use, so it fits straight into the decisions owners’ technical teams make every day. And it has already been tested on a commercial wind farm in complex terrain and a very rainy climate.
ATENEA Erosion Estimation with two inspections-recalibrations vs. Operating Time, showing the optimal repair window and the blade structural threshold.
With ATENEA, CENER wants to rethink how inspection campaigns are planned, turbine by turbine. The decision moves from a generic calendar to the real erosion each blade will see, anchored to actual inspection findings, with every repair placed in its best window. This is how CENER builds its tools: deep engineering made simple and automated, so it reaches the technical teams who decide on O&M; our way of turning engineering into real value for the industry
Today’s blades are already being eroded by rain. As farms age and these trends intensify, the problem will only grow. Site-specific, calibrated prediction is a step toward proactive, data-driven blade maintenance: it lets operators stop repairing by the calendar and start repairing at the right moment, protecting the value and extending the life of the fleet.