Page 65: of Marine Technology Magazine (July 2018)

SkySpecs cofounder and chief technology of? cer Tom Brady stored in the Batwind 1 MW lithium-ion batteries and con- said information gathered through his company’s automated nected to the grid.

drone inspection service helps owners to form their predictive Energy storage technologies like batteries and others are maintenance strategies with “a mountain of blade data” and expected to grow increasingly important for grid stability in analytics tools that help to better understand the health of their the years to come, especially as the installed costs of battery equipment. storage systems continues to fall. Sebastian Bringsvaerd, de-

SkySpecs’ aerial drones conduct the inspection fully autono- velopment manager for Hywind and Batwind, explained that mously without human control, and therefore provide more variability of renewable energy can be managed by the grid to precise, consistent and robust inspection capabilities, the a certain degree, but new, smart solutions for energy storage company said. Data gathered by the drone is automatically are needed to provide ? rm power.

uploaded to the SkySpecs software product, Horizon, which Equinor compares Batwind to an “energy warehouse” that classi? es images by damage type and severity. An advanced works to mitigate intermittency and optimize output. Its pur- feature set in the software that includes repair planning work- pose, Equionr says, is to “teach” the battery when to hold back ? ows, analytics dashboards and insights then enable users to and store electricity, and when to send power to the grid, thus spot trends, project repair costs and determine ROI. increasing value. In order to make the system as smart as pos- sible, Equinor and Masdar are developing algorithms based

Equinor, Masdor on multiple data sources, including weather forecasts, mar-

Partners Equinor (formerly Statoil) and Masdor have in- ket prices, maintenance schedules, consumption patterns and stalled a battery storage system they call Batwind, which grid services. Digitalization is a key driver, Bringsvaerd said. stores energy generated from the world’s ? rst commercial Batwind’s power management system becomes smarter as its ? oating wind farm. Electricity produced 25 kilometers off- fed more data, he explained, adding that the value in storage shore at the Hywind Scotland wind farm is transported via is not necessarily in the amount of energy stored, but how its cables to an onshore substation in Peterhead, Scotland to be optimized and better controlled.

Illustration of Equinor’s Batwind battery project for Hywind Scotland.

Credit: Equinor

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