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The first wireless wind turbine blade sensor for automatic, real-time condition-based monitoring

Project description

Three-in-one monitoring solution for wind turbine blades breaking into the market

Maintenance costs account for the largest part of total annual costs of a wind turbine, with blades representing the lion's share. Austria-based company eologix sensor technology gmbh has unveiled eolACC, the first condition-based monitoring system mounted on blades that combines three features: blade crack detection, pitch angle measurements and blade icing detection. The new monitoring solution will save wind turbine owners up to EUR 2.9 million throughout the whole turbine lifetime, recovering the investment in eolACC in the first two months. With EU funding of the project EOLOGIX, the company will coordinate commercial and project management activities to bring the product to the market. A two-year payback period and an annual revenue of about EUR 12 million till 2024 is expected.

Objective

Maintenance costs are one of the largest problems in the wind energy market, adding to up to 40% of total wind turbine costs. Blades take the lion’s share of this, with 20-30% of all maintenance costs. Our solution, eolACC is the first condition-based monitoring on-blade sensor system to combine 3 features: blade crack detection, pitch angle measurements and blade icing detection. Monitoring all these features will save wind turbine owners up to €2.9 M across the turbine lifetime, recovering the investment in eolACC in the first 2 months.
We studied the target market and competitors. Forecasts predict the wind power O&M market will grow to €22 bn by 2025. eolACC has full Freedom to Operate in our target markets of Europe, North America and Asia. We currently have over 50 customers which have purchased over 200 of our ice detection sensor system, many of which have been asking for an all-in-one solution as eolACC. We will leverage our connection with them to first expand into France, Belgium and the DACH region in 2021, then the rest of Europe and North America in 2022 and Asia in 2023. Our strategy will be to sell our product first to turbine owners directly, and then through large OEMs. We already have registered interest from several of our current customers (Enercon, e.on. Tecnocentre eolien, EVN, Verbund) to implement eolACC into their systems. We will use our current clients, our connection with Phoenix Contact and local sales partners to assist our dissemination efforts.
We require a 24-month project with a budget of €1.62 M to bring eolACC to market. Our Work Plan is composed of 3 Technical Work Packages, one Commercial and one for Project Management. Our Phase 2 project will also result in the creation of 6 new jobs. The project is highly profitable, bringing a 4.01 ROI up to 2024 for the €1.62M required to bring our innovation to market. This will translate into a payback period of 2 years and total revenues of almost €12M per year to 2024.

Call for proposal

H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Sub call

H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2

Coordinator

EOLOGIX SENSOR TECHNOLOGY GMBH
Net EU contribution
€ 1 133 877,50
Address
WAAGNER-BIRO-STRASSE 124
8020 GRAZ
Austria

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Südösterreich Steiermark Graz
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 1 619 825,00