Beijing, China, October 18, 2016 – Sentient Science, a New York-based wind turbine technology company, has developed a material science-based life extension solution designed to help wind turbine operators digitalize their business and take actions that extend the life of wind turbine assets and reduce their cost of energy.Sentient’s management team and top scientists will be at the China Windpower 2016 conference in Beijing, China this week and will be presenting their innovative technology to Chinese wind operators and suppliers.
“Our goal is to help operators achieve a 13 percent savings on their levelized cost of energy by moving their businesses to take advantage of digitalization,” said Sentient Science CEO & President Ward Thomas. “Other industries have found great success in reducing their costs and increasing revenue by embracing digitalization and testing their decisions in the virtual world before applying changes out in the field.”
Sentient’s technology, DigitalClone® Live, being demonstrated at China Windpower 2016, creates a digital model of a wind asset and uses the digital information to drive down the cost of operations and maintenance, supply chain integration, and risk management. DigitalClone® Live uses a unique proprietary technology based on material science to simulate and understand the health of each asset and provide actions needed to extend life by keeping wind turbines healthy.
Each DigitalClone model is simulated under the site’s operating conditions to predict the life and monitor the state of health over a 10 to 15-year period. A “3D” watch list for each asset is presented to the operator with life extension actions, depending on its health condition, designed to prevent major unplanned maintenance events.
The technology also provides the foresight needed to reduce inventory carrying costs, negotiate better terms and conditions between suppliers and operators, move to supply chain automation, reduce warranty claims and negotiate better insurance rates. The solution can be used by multiple departments within an operator’s corporation. Asset managers and operations managers use it to prevent unplanned failures and to understand their fleet’s risk. Top executives use it to make business decisions on new development plans, during warranty and insurance negotiations and to build multiyear budgets and forecasts.
“Our technology took 10 years to build by a group of world class material scientists. It was hard, but in 2010, NASA validated that DigitalClone® provides accurate insight into the earliest point in time that cracks initiate within the subsurface of rotating metal components and materials. Operators receive actions to extend life far in advance of sensor detection and big data solutions,” Thomas said. “We’re proud of the work we have accomplished, and we look forward to partnering with operators here in China to ensure cost reduction and reliability improvement in the face of subsidy cuts and curtailment.”
Schedule a meeting with Sentient’s team at the China Windpower Show.
ABOUT SENTIENT SCIENCE
Sentient Science is a trusted third party headquartered in the Advanced Manufacturing District in Buffalo, N.Y. Sentient Science’s main objective is to help wind energy operators achieve a reduction of $10/MWh in their levelized cost of energy through a number of initiatives. Sentient Science’s DigitalClone® Live Software as a Service, builds a material science-based DigitalClone® model of each asset and predicts the life of the major systems and individual components. The forward visibility of knowing which assets will fail over 20+ years, when and where, enables the operator to build multiyear budgets and up-tower and down-tower component replacement forecasts, and other life extension actions. We work with the risk managers on warranty and insurance negotiations, new wind farm development and other business strategies. As a champion of the operator, we work with the wind turbine original equipment manufacturers and suppliers to computationally test their products, simulate trade off and sensitivity studies and make life extension recommendations to ensure optimal performance. Sentient’s Buy on Life business model provides the operator with the component life prediction of the supplier offerings, facilitates better terms and condition agreements and enables supply chain automation.
Sentient Science began in 2001 as an R&D initiative. The technology was validated by NASA in 2010 and commercially launched in the wind energy market in 2014, when the company was honored by the White House with the Tibbetts Award. In the last 24 months, Sentient Science has 17,000 assets under contract and was honored for its commercial growth and momentum by Bloomberg New Energy Finance with the 2016 Pioneer’s Award. Sentient received its first round of investment funding from TOBA Capital in 2015, which is helping the company’s global expansion and plans to be monitoring 50,000 rotating assets by mid-2017 and 1 million assets beyond energy by 2020.