EDF Renewables has contracted Onyx InSight to provide predictive maintenance services for the Blyth offshore wind demonstration project off the coast of Northumberland in north-east England.
Onyx will use its Fleet Monitor platform to keep tabs on the project’s five MHI Vestas 8.3MW turbines for the first three years of operation.
The system pulls data from a range of sensors to monitor turbine condition and performance. An Onyx monitoring team aims to detect, diagnose and mitigate any problems before they occur.
Onyx InSight business development manager Fraser Morris said: “Turbines of this size will soon become the standard in offshore wind, which means operators need to have a good understanding of how they perform.
“With energy production on this scale, the stakes are inevitably raised, and the business case for investing in robust and accurate predictive analytics is clear.
“The ability of a predictive maintenance platform to handle large quantities of data – from a diverse range of sensors – will be a key differentiator when it comes to mitigating the risk of downtime for these 8MW+ machines over the long term.”
EDF officially opened the 41.5MW Blyth project in June this year.