SkySpecs integrates advanced AI capabilities
14/09/2022
With the launch of SkySpecs’ Horizon CMS platform, wind turbine operators can now unlock the full potential of their fleet data in order to lower operation and maintenance (O&M) costs and focus on optimising for maximum uptime. The advanced condition monitoring platform is enhanced with Kaleidoscope AI, a cutting-edge fault detection technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for early and robust fault detection of critical drivetrain components, such as gearboxes, generators and main bearings. The Horizon CMS platform is disrupting the software paradigm that engineers have relied on for over a decade.
“We built the platform so operators can unify sensor data from across their entire fleet and radically improve predictive performance and efficiency,” said Danny Ellis, CEO at SkySpecs. “True diagnostic AI has been a critical development path to help asset operators achieve a step change in monitoring efficiency. Through that effort, we realised early that asset owners also just need better CMS tools to improve efficiency and performance. CMS’s slow evolution has been holding the industry back. Horizon CMS is the leap forward the industry needs.”
Horizon CMS is a cloud-based platform for condition monitoring of renewable energy assets using sensor data streams from the already existing CMS hardware. It is built to enable the deployment of the Kaleidoscope AI library for advanced fault detection. The AI models are trained using CMS domain knowledge, mechanical data and past failure data. This ensures that operators receive early and robust warnings on any developing faults. The work experience for CMS engineering teams will be revolutionised with a highly performant diagnostic toolbox and powerful alarm management workflows.
The software platform works across multiple CMS brands and seamlessly interfaces with existing hardware. It enables asset operators to unify condition monitoring across data streams into a single powerful platform. This is especially important for engineers and data scientists that are monitoring fleets with multi-brand wind turbines.
The resulting package is a high-performance cloud platform optimised for large-scale and advanced condition monitoring.
Horizon CMS was developed through industrial innovation partnerships with two of the top five largest wind farm operators in the world, which have provided the operational environment and contributed the data and expert knowledge needed to develop the platform.
The off-the-shelf Software as a Service (SaaS) solution provides many key benefits to operators and engineers, such as:
- Reduced drivetrain-related downtime and better O&M planning;
- Turbine efficiency gains due to earlier and more robust fault detection, resulting in reduced downtime;
- Up to 10× monitoring performance compared to classic CMS methods;
- Unified CMS data streams in one user-friendly cloud platform; and
- Drastically simplified alarm management.
“Horizon CMS is a part of setting the industry up to take a big step into the future,” added Ellis. “Access to actionable data is a key part of that next step. Operators know that data is crucial for performance management and long-term maintenance of fleets. Horizon CMS puts all the necessary data at their fingertips.”
