7 May 2021

A win for the wind industry: ONYX Insight collects two prestigious Queen’s Awards.

ONYX Insight, a leading provider of predictive data analytics and engineering expertise to the global wind industry, has won two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise – the highest official UK awards for British companies – in the categories of Innovation and International Trade.

Only five businesses received two awards in 2021, with ONYX Insight the only renewable energy business to win double honours.

The innovation award arrives on the back of their development of ecoCMS, a high-performance, smart condition monitoring solution for wind turbines and industrial machinery, installed on wind farms to gather data effectively and affordably. The enormous success of ecoCMS has helped the company make a substantial global environmental impact.

Meanwhile, their international trade accolade follows deals to export products and services from the UK to 18 countries, ensuring a foothold in key markets, and pushing the business’s monitoring portfolio to over 7,000 wind turbines. In 2021, ONYX Insight will open offices in Spain and China joining others across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the US as it continues to strengthen its global presence.

Bruce Hall, CEO ONYX Insight said

“Our ambition is to help accelerate the global energy transition by deploying the latest technologies and analytic tools with our customers to help them reduce their operation costs. We’re proud to see our team’s hard work and creativity independently validated in these awards, celebrating the outstanding success of the business.”

“As we continue to support wind farm owners in reducing their operations and maintenance costs, we are ramping up our R&D to deliver additional innovations, enabling a step-change in the wind industry’s approach to data. It’s an invigorating time to be a part of this journey.”

The growth of the business has been underpinned by the rapid expansion of wind energy globally, driving demand for predictive maintenance services across both established and emerging markets. This rapidly growing sub-sector is worth approximately £300 million annually. ONYX Insight has expanded to 100 staff globally across 20 nationalities to service this demand, with the majority of the business’ international trade consisting of expert data monitoring and engineering consultancy.

The acknowledgement of the business’ robust reputation for UK wind innovation on the world stage comes with a further nod to its creation of highly skilled jobs at home; in software, data analytics and engineering.

With some UK businesses struggling amid the financial downturn, ONYX Insight has sought to foster specialist talent in the UK through a programme of job creation as part of their continued expansion. Capitalising on the heritage of the East Midlands as a hub for software, electronics and component manufacturing, the company outsources its production of ecoCMS hardware to a nearby firm in Derby.

The Queen’s Award was established in 1965 to recognise UK business excellence, with four main categories of innovation, international trade, sustainable development, and promoting opportunity through social mobility.

Queens double award onyx

Kind charles with john coultate onyx insight wide — Kind Charles with John Coultate, VP of Advanced Sensing at ONYX Insight

John Coultate, VP Advanced Sensing, ONYX Insight added

“The decision to utilise advanced MEMS sensors – such as those used in mobile phones – in our hardware was a lightbulb moment for us. Using this type of technology has transformed the return on investment for our customers. The wind industry globally is now able to optimise the efficiency of older wind turbines allowing customers to continually driving down costs.”

“We are excited to bring advanced edge computing to a broader range of assets than was envisioned years ago, opening the floodgates to a new wave of digitalisation to help asset owners understand the health of their wind turbines and make smarter operational decisions.”

Learn more about ecoCMS