Why Human Inspectors Beat AI on Wind Turbines
Cristina Fernandez Alonso is a Product Service Engineer at GE Vernova, one of the world’s largest offshore wind operators. She has spent the last eight years working on the technical challenges of running wind turbines at sea — the ones drone cameras don’t always catch.
In this episode of the Field Intelligence podcast, she walks through the everyday reality of blade inspections offshore.
In the conversation:
- Why you don’t want to miss the seasonal window for repairs.
- Why drones handle the first pass, but humans still make the calls.
- How the wind technician’s job shifted from repair to diagnosis.
- How one blurry photo can decide whether a turbine keeps running.
- What happens to wind blades at the end of their 25-year life.
