Duke Energy Renewables has collaborated with Sentient Science to adopt a digitalisation system to safely manage and reduce the cost of maintaining its wind turbines.
As part of the collaboration, Duke Energy Renewables aims to integrate Sentient Science’s DigitalClone solution to reduce costs and provide accurate data to the company’s wind technicians. This will enable the production of more reliable wind energy.
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Duke Energy Renewables currently owns and manages 4,000MW of windpower generating assets and has been able to achieve significant savings by shifting to in-house operations and maintenance (O&M).
The company also provides O&M services to third-party wind turbine owner-operators.
Duke Energy Renewable Operations vice-president Jeff Wehner said: “We’ve estimated that these operators can save significant O&M costs by using an independent services provider.
“As wind fleets across the US age and wear increases, emerging technologies will be important in driving future cost savings.
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By GlobalData“Duke Energy Renewables is making investments now to ensure we have state-of-the-art tools for our technicians, replacement teams, and asset managers.
“After we have some experience in our own fleet, we expect to offer this enhanced service to other operators who contract with us.”
Duke Energy Renewables has also developed a pilot programme with Sentient Science to evaluate how its DigitalClone Live software will be able to predict failure risk and gearbox health over a period of several years.
Sentient Science has also digitalised the GE 1.5MW machines installed within Duke Energy’s operational fleet and has detected damaged wind turbines that could lead to a plant failure.
