‘I use heavy-duty drones to deliver tools and parts to offshore wind turbines’
A British firm has supplied dozens of turbines in a single day
A drone hovers gingerly above a gargantuan wind turbine – and it’s brought something with it. Dangling below the vehicle on a long tether is a large orange box. For why use a crane when you have a stork? A stork fringed with sharply spinning blades, and loudly buzzing.
“We were doing 12 flights a day delivering 80 kilograms a time, in the middle of the North Sea,” says Lance Russell, chief technology and operations officer of Skylift UAV, a UK-based offshore drone delivery firm, as he recalls one of the first major jobs his company undertook at Borssele Offshore Wind Farm, operated by Danish company Ørsted, back in 2024.
“That made me very proud,” he says. Occasionally, tools, parts, safety equipment and other materials must be delivered to offshore turbines, one-by-one. But making the deliveries with human crews and helicopters or ships can take a long time.
Last year, Skylift’s drones delivered packages to another of Ørsted’s wind farms. “We, in our best run, did 40 in a day,” says Russell.
