ONYX Insight, a major global provider of predictive maintenance solutions (PdM), and Nearthlab, a leading autonomous drone solution company, have entered into partnership to deliver a whole turbine predictive maintenance solution for wind farm operators.
The industry is currently seeking to make operations more efficient amidst the backdrop of a labor, resource, and inflation-challenged environment. Together ONYX and Nearthlab will bring capabilities forward for large operators that address these challenges.
ONYX Insight will utilize Nearthlab’s experience with mobile drone technology, reducing reliance on the availability of trained drone pilots and enabling self-performing operators to perform visual inspections of their turbine blades for substantially lower costs.
Ashley Crowther, Chief Commercial Officer, ONYX Insight, said: “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. 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 analyzed can incur high costs as a trained pilot is required.
However, with Nearthlab’s use of autonomous drone technology combined with ONYX Insight’s expert analysis and PdM services, wind operators can significantly reduce the costs of maintaining their turbines.
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.
Combining this with ONYX Insight’s depth of experience in turbine reliability engineering, the integration of drivetrain, blade health monitoring, and enterprise management systems into a single business ecosystem is a unique proposition that will transform how wind turbines are managed.
With ONYX Insight now able to monitor 85 percent of major component failures, an all-in-one turbine health management provider delivers the confidence to self-perform sooner, 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 full PdM for their wind turbines with consistent reporting from a single ecosystem while bringing drone operations in-house.
Jay Choi, CEO & Co-Founder, Nearthlab, said: “NearthWIND Mobile, our latest plug-and-play solution, is proving to be a game-changer in the world of drone inspections. 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.”
The partnership with Nearthlab augments ONYX Insight’s wealth of blade design and maintenance expertise, and strengthens its commitment to delivering comprehensive, world-class monitoring beyond the drivetrain.
