Articles

From high cost to high confidence: what the ELEVEN-I acquisition means for blade reliability & performance

Dr. John Coultate
VP, Advanced Sensing
ONYX Insight

Table of contents

Larger and more complex turbines
Fully integrated and consolidated solution
A glimpse into the future

Blade damage, failures, blade loss, and tower collapses can be financially and reputationally ruinous for wind farm owners. ONYX Insight is supporting owners and operators by integrating blade condition monitoring specialist ELEVEN-I to its predictive analytics platform.

The financial impacts of catastrophic blade failures on wind farm owners can be colossal. On average, it costs $500,000 to replace a blade on a typical 2 MW onshore wind turbine, and that rises to over $1m offshore. There are also the additional costs of lost power production when a single turbine is out of action; the chance the whole wind farm could be turned off while the owner waits for inspections to ensure other turbines at the project will not be affected; and the long-term reputational damage caused by a major turbine failure. Supply chain constraints add delays, depending on blade manufacturing capacity and tooling availability. This is why ONYX Insight has committed to supporting owners and operators in the wind industry to better understand the health of their blades and reduce their financial risks.

Larger and more complex turbines

Onshore and offshore wind turbines continue to grow larger and more complex.

In its “Global Wind Report 2025”, the Global Wind Energy Council reported there are now wind turbines with headline capacities of 26 MW and 15 MW in development in the offshore and onshore sectors respectively. It said that the race for larger turbines has resulted in “higher generation efficiency” but also presents “significant challenges”.

“Frequent issues such as blade fractures, blade tower strikes, and vortex-induced vibrations reflect deficiencies in blade design standards,” it said.

Blade reliability has been in the spotlight in recent months, as projects comprising fewer, larger turbines face greater financial risk from catastrophic failures. A blade failure, blade loss, or full turbine collapse is not only a problem for the individual turbine affected. It can also result in owners being forced to take projects offline while they conduct a full investigation and can cause long-term reputational damage.

Therefore, it is important for owners and operators to monitor how their blades are performing so they can identify problems early. Replacing a blade is often around ten times more expensive than repairing a crack up tower at an early stage, for example. Predictive analytics cannot remove the risk of blade problems, but they can help insulate owners from the worst financial and reputational impacts.

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Fully integrated and consolidated solution

The ELEVEN-I solution works alongside existing blade inspection methods. At present, most owners conduct drone inspections or visual inspections to detect and monitor clearly visible problems with their blades.

The ELEVEN-I blade condition monitoring system (CMS) complements this by detecting cracks at an early stage, when they may not be visible to a drone, and providing continuous online monitoring of the health and performance of the blades on an ongoing basis. Blade CMS can therefore offer insights into problems between drone inspections and issues that a drone would not otherwise identify.

After the drivetrain, blades are typically the second highest source of unscheduled O&M cost for a wind farms. A whole-turbine approach to monitoring is beneficial because it gives owners a single, integrated view of drivetrain pitch structure health.

In our experience, owners usually want to work with one condition monitoring pitch and integrated, blade health. In our experience, owners usually want to work with one condition monitoring platform rather than use multiple systems, as it is much more efficient and provided and integrated, optimised approach to monitoring. Using a consolidated system to monitor all of the different components of turbine health via a central dashboard helps owners to see faults early, make better decisions, plan O&M efficiently, and boost project performance.

replacement

A glimpse into the future

When we look back in ten years’ time, we believe the acquisition of ELEVEN-I, backed by ONYX Insight’s owner Macquarie Capital, will be transformative for us.

But, more than that, we expect blade condition monitoring and blade analytics to become commonplace in the wind sector. Today, blade condition monitoring systems are relatively new in the industry. We expect to see an increased use of this technology in the coming years – both as a retrofit for wind turbines in the field, as an option on new wind turbines leaving the factory. We are substantially ahead of the curve on what promises to be a major technological breakthrough for the wind industry.

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