Operations & maintenance The demand for data
As wind farms grow in size and number, the need for accurate data on turbine performance has become increasingly pressing – maintenance operations can be costly both in terms of time and money, particularly when dealing with offshore farms. Implementing digitalisation can help to pinpoint damage ahead of time and avoid unnecessary site visits, while also reducing overall operations costs. Nicholas Kenny speaks with Bruce Hall, CEO at ONYX InSight, and Jonas Corné, CEO at Greenbyte, to break down the benefits of digitalisation for the wind industry.
s a relatively young industry, at least in comparison with the fossil fuel titans that dominated energy production for decades, wind power still has a lot of room to improve on its operations and productivity. Turbines grow ever larger and more powerful, recyclable versions of their components are developed to reduce their carbon footprint, and the cost of development, installation and operation continues to go down. It’s a good time, really, to work in wind.
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In order to maximise efficiency, however, there is one path that is still largely in its nascency within the industry, though more and more companies are gradually waking up to its potential – digitalisation. Wind farm operators with effective digital strategies, particularly with regards to offshore sites – typically harder to reach than their onshore counterparts – will be able to remotely monitor and assess asset health and performance, enabling operators to optimise maintenance efforts and the time in which their turbines are operational. All of this, in turn, will serve to improve energy production and profitability.
“It sounds rather simplistic,
but it’s about making the wind industry more efficient. As subsidies are withdrawn wind has to stand on its own two feet. This means delivering lower LCOE [levelised cost of energy] through greater efficiencies,” explains Bruce Hall, CEO of ONYX InSight, a leader in engineering and software
solutions for predictive analytics. While wind has finally surpassed gas and oil as an economic source of
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com 11
electricity, according to figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the LCOE has become even more competitive after recent gas and oil shortages in the second half of 2021, there remains considerable space for the industry to increase its efficiencies through digitalisation. Now, those efficiencies are not solely going to be down to increasing automation and digitalisation of the wind industry. “We are a small cog in a very big machine,” Hall says. But while coal and gas and other fossil fuel alternatives have had more than 100 years to perfect their ways of operation and production, wind is still relatively new, which means that it boasts far greater potential in this area. In particular, as subsidies are withdrawn from the wind industry, the need for
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