Drone insurance for technical inspection

A modern wind turbine blade tops out beyond 120 metres. The ceiling of the open category is therefore passed by the geometry of the structure, before you have decided anything at all. Inspection falls into the specific category, and the discussion starts there.

What that does to your policy

In the specific category, article 17 of the Royal Decree refers to the European regulation with no weight threshold at all. A 3-kilo aircraft comes under the same regime as a 20-kilo one. Minimum cover rises to 0.75 million special drawing rights, roughly 885,000 euros.

The real risk is not your drone

A turbine blade is replaced for hundreds of thousands of euros, a substation transformer for more. The ratio is inverted compared with most jobs: what you might damage is worth a hundred times what you are flying.

It is the only one of the six sectors where we advise discussing the liability limit before discussing hull cover.

The declared regime must match the actual flight

That your declared operational regime matches what you actually do. Many operators moved over on 1 January 2026, when the national standard scenarios ceased to be valid, without their policy following.

The payload weighs more than the aircraft

On an inspection, the payload often weighs more than the aircraft in the insured value. Radiometric thermal camera, high-magnification optics, additional lighting, and sometimes a measuring sensor specific to the structure. Each is declared at its own value.

The thermal camera deserves particular attention: its cost frequently exceeds that of the airframe, and some insurers cap cover for carried equipment at a percentage of the drone’s value. That cap has to be checked before the policy is taken out.

The certificate the asset owner requires

No wind farm operator, no network manager lets anyone fly without having seen the certificate. It is asked for in advance, with the name of the remote pilot and the period of work, and it governs access to the site.

The sums required here are higher than elsewhere, for a simple reason: the value of the structure inspected. A damaged blade is not repaired, it is replaced, with the machine out of service while that happens. Tender documents routinely call for sums well above the legal floor, and that requirement belongs to the commercial contract, not to the regulations.

What the insurer looks at to price an inspection

The operational regime dominates everything else. Work carried out in the specific category is not priced like work in the open category, because the risk assessment does not reach the same conclusion. Then come the value of the thermal equipment and the type of structures visited: an isolated pylon in open country and a working industrial plant do not present the same exposure.

We put those elements to the insurers and come back with proposals that can be compared with one another.

Read more: the three routes into the specific category, and the comparison of the six covers.