Page 39: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2023)

38 40

INSIGHTS DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES © New Africa/AdobeStock

Seeing Wind’s

Problems with ‘Digi-eyes’

How adopting digital technologies hold the key to enabling asset control

By Mirelle Ball, Content Marketing Manager, ONYX Insight s the collective pursuit of net-zero accelerates, (O&M) strategies as the supply chain races to keep pace. nations across the globe are facing increasing As windfarms increase in size and components increase in pressure to support the development of re- complexity, recent reports highlight a correlation between newable energy infrastructure that can drive the deployment of larger, modern wind turbines and rising

A low-carbon economies. Wind continues to hold up in the mechanical issues that lead to unplanned downtime. This energy mix but its challenges to fast scale-up are becoming can prove costly to operators, with decreased energy pro- more known, especially with regards to turbine reliability. duction and component replacements seeing some making

Transformative growth across the physical supply chain early exits with reductions in pro?tability.

within the wind industry is already evident – installed wind As such, the rapid development and adoption of the digi- capacity globally reached 906 GW in 2022, with forecasts tal supply chain continues to be a lifeline in addressing these indicating a further increase of 680 GW in the next ?ve issues. To some extent, the acceleration of digitalization has years, according to GWEC’s Global Wind Report 2023. been similar to that of physical supply chain developments;

However, the race for scale in the past decade is notably as the wind industry faced new challenges, digital innova- having knock-on effects on operations and maintenance tors and suppliers evolved to solve them. Demands for in- 40 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM