Global provider of predictive maintenance solutions Onyx Insight and autonomous drone solution company Nearthlab have entered into partnership to deliver a whole turbine predictive maintenance solution for wind farm operators, aimed at bringing capabilities forward for large operators utilising Nearthlab’s experience with mobile drone technology. This in turn will reduce reliance on the availability of trained drone pilots and enable self-performing operators to perform visual inspections of their turbine blades for substantially lower costs.
“After two years of collaboration with Nearthlab across a large fleet of assets, we’ve identified strong benefits to turbine health management by combining our technologies into one unified offer” said Ashley Crowther, Chief Commercial Officer, Onyx Insight. “For major components in a fleet, the damage cases can be managed efficiently, end-to-end, from detection through to repair and QAQC.”
The partnership will cover North America, with Onyx Insight licensed to use Nearthlab’s Zoomable software to assess the health of wind turbines.
The announcement comes on the eve of Blades USA 2023, a two-day conference in Austin, Texas, which provides industry leaders with the latest insights, technical innovations, and strategic developments within the blade operations and maintenance industry.
Blades are one of the most challenging and expensive components to maintain, and methods to ensure their health using drones to capture data which can then be analysed can incur high costs as a trained pilot is required.
However, Nearthlab’s autonomous drone technology combined with Onyx Insight’s expert analysis and PdM services, wind operators could potentially reduce the costs of maintaining their turbines significantly.
Its solid track record built upon NearthWIND Mobile and other cutting-edge autonomous inspection solutions, has made Nearthlab a natural partner to Onyx Insight, the market leader in wind turbine predictive maintenance.
Onyx Insight says it is now able to monitor 85 percent of major component failures, helping to deliver confidence sooner by enabling owner/operators to identify problems earlier, manage them with fewer resources, and ultimately bring down the overall cost of wind farm operations.
The partnership will enable wind operators to deliver full PdM for their wind turbines with consistent reporting from a single ecosystem while bringing drone operations in-house.
“NearthWIND Mobile, our latest plug-and-play solution, is proving to be a game-changer in the world of drone inspections” said Jay Choi, CEO & Co-Founder, Nearthlab. “Now, dubbed with Onyx Insight’s expertise and reach within the predictive maintenance market, Nearthlab will come to spread its wings wide across industries and regions.”
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