Ventient Energy, one of the largest European renewable power producers, and ONYX InSight, a leading provider of predictive maintenance solutions to the wind industry, are partnering to optimize output and extend the life of a large fleet of the U.K.’s onshore turbines with new technology.
As a fast advancing company with wide operational expertise and strong merger and acquisition capability, Ventient is acquiring onshore wind assets to achieve sustainable portfolio growth and deliver greater rewards for investors. As part of a strategy to improve the reliability of its fleet, more than 300 turbines across 17 wind farms will be retrofitted with ONYX InSight’s condition monitoring system (ecoCMS) advanced sensing technology and cloud-based predictive analytics, fleetMONITOR. This will enable a transition to proactive maintenance, aiming to reduce downtime and major component refurbishment costs.
With the retrofit, the turbines will be “data-rich,” enabling predictive analytics and optimized repair planning.
“Once we get the equipment installed, we can identify bearing failures routinely six to 24 months in advance of repair,” said Dr. Evgenia Golysheva, head of engineering at ONYX InSight. “To ensure efficient installation, we’ve streamlined the process and have a strong quality assurance and control process. We have piloted on several sites already to iron out any potential technical challenges and make the scale-up easy.”
“We operate some of the oldest wind farms in the U.K., which up until now have run with no vibration monitoring of drive train components,” said Martin Vox, asset reliability engineer at Ventient. “This has led to major component failures being discovered at a late stage of damage progression, requiring unplanned work to restore to an operable condition. Some of our oldest wind farms do not have ethernet data transmission available within the nacelle, and ONYX InSight has developed a robust 4G solution to allow retrofit on these turbines.”
Where operators implement this Industry 4.0 solution, it yields better data that helps diagnose issues early and allows them to solve real-world problems from a cost reduction and power production point of view.
ONYX InSight’s advanced sensing solution has transformed the market through its use of affordable and effective micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensors and analytics that have demonstrated predictive maintenance is invaluable for the wind-energy industry.
“This technology will play a key role in the near- and long-term success of wind energy in the U.K. and around the world,” said Sven Thiesen, sales director Europe for ONYX InSight. “And in the current circumstances, when operators have restrictions on where and when to send teams on-site, insight that allows owner-operators to manage their assets and maintain revenues will be invaluable. We are pleased that ONYX InSight is proving that the return on investment calculation for adding advanced sensing on older turbines can be turned on its head.”
More info: www.onyxinsight.com
