British Columbia-based start-up Clir Renewables Inc. has developed new software designed to detect and quantify the impact of leading edge erosion on wind turbine blades.
The company explains that rain droplets, for example, can eat away at blades and lead to early deterioration. However, it can be difficult to parse out the leading edge erosion impact from items such as turbine control changes, environmental conditions and other performance-degrading conditions. Clir says its software is able to apply domain expertise, advanced analytics and machine learning to separate leading edge erosion from other underperformance issues to quantify the financial impact over time.
“Leading edge erosion is a common problem we are seeing with our clients,” says Andrew Brunskill, Clir’s leader of data analyics. “Detecting leading edge erosion during a project’s warranty period, so maintenance is able to be planned and scheduled, has a huge and positive financial impact.”
Gareth Brown, the CEO of Clir, adds, “By providing the industry with a much deeper understanding of their wind turbine performance, we are helping lower the cost of wind energy to drive forward the business case for greater global renewable energy deployment.”
Clir recently raised C$2.1 million in a seed-stage financing round.
