UL Renewables and ONYX Insight collaborate on expanded technologies for wind energy

UL Renewables, the global safety science leader and renewable energy experts, has deepened its partnership with ONYX Insight, a leading provider of data analytics and engineering expertise to the global wind industry.

The businesses are collaborating on an expanded life extension program, using UL’s wind forecasting and structural assessment with ONYX Insight’s O&M expertise and predictive technology, to help operators generate additional revenue – and clean energy – from their maturing assets.

More than 15% of wind projects will reach the 15-20 year-old bracket in 2022. As assets age, they can become less reliable, leaving operators with three main choices to safeguard their investment: repowering, decommissioning, or life extension. By removing uncertainty around crucial maintenance decisions, advanced analysis and monitoring technology is transforming the economics of life extension and delivering years of extra revenue for asset owners at an affordable cost.

Dating back to 2014, ONYX Insight and UL’s partnership includes due diligence on over 100GW of assets globally. It covers technical advisory on green and brown field M&A projects as well as repowering , involving turbine technical review, evaluating technology or contractual risks, and operational expenditure forecasts.

The businesses have built on their collaboration with recent life extension projects, with hundreds of turbines across a range of makes and models. The expansion of the partnership will enhance UL’s in-house structural analysis with drivetrain evaluation capabilities as well as structural health monitoring for turbines, towers, and foundations through ONYX Insight’s advanced sensing solutions and analytics.

UL’s extensive track record of life extension work includes structural assessment –turbine, tower, and foundation – to ascertain turbine’s current health and estimates of turbine remaining useful life.

Operators need data on key structural components including tower and foundation health to calculate risk levels and projected maintenance costs, allowing them to confidently assign budgets and justify key choices to investors. ONYX Insight’s foundation monitoring hardware unlocks additional data streams for analysis, feeding into an informed predictive maintenance strategy and reducing operations and maintenance costs.

Dr Zhiwei Zhang, Chief Commercial Officer, ONYX Insight, said:

“Successfully extending the life of a project can mean reducing the cost of operations in the long-term as the project ages. With our broad suite of solutions, monitoring the health of the asset from top to bottom, we are delighted to support UL in enabling this cost-reduction, helping older wind farms play their part in the race to net zero while delivering stable revenue for their owners.”

Jeremy Tchou, Director of Wind Advisory for North America, UL, said:

“When assets near the end of their original lifecycles, operators will consider two key objectives: maintaining safety and profitability. We are proud to partner with ONYX Insight to help asset operators achieve these goals using in-house structural analysis and advanced monitoring technology, arming them with the data they need to deliver for their stakeholders. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with ONYX Insight as we drive to support the energy transition through innovative solutions.”