Behind the investment: Windscope
We are pleased to announce that we have just completed our first investment from our sixth Accelerator fund into Windscope - a team building a SaaS-based platform for the onshore and offshore wind industry.
Right now, maintenance costs account for 25% of the lifetime cost of a turbine, with operator margins being squeezed as the market starts to mature. There is therefore a huge incentive for customers to get access to better data and insights about performance as current systems provide limited health or predictive data.
Windscope’s SaaS-based platform will monitor and manage the component condition of their assets without the need for any additional hardware. The technology has been spun out from Ada Mode Ltd, an engineering consultancy and software provider with significant industry input.
The complex algorithms and engineering logic underpinning the platform significantly improves accuracy and addresses two key challenges for operators:
The need for independent analytics - The platform removes the conflict of interest in which manufacturers provide performance analytics as well as being contractually obliged to guarantee certain levels of performance of their turbines.
Maintenance - Operators do not have a robust way of validating that technicians are conducting all of the maintenance instructed, or that work carried out has been effective in remedying a degrading system. Windscope provides this insight across thousands of systems in a portfolio at the click of a button, on demand.
The team behind Windscope comprises 5 founders, led by Dr Joe Donnelly, who has significant technology engineering experience within the wind and nuclear sectors. The rest of the team comprises a combination of deep digital / AI development, engineering and operational skills.
Their product is currently undergoing a Beta test programme on 200MW of installed capacity across six onshore operators to validate outputs ahead of potential adoption.