Why we invested: Aerones — streamlining wind energy operations & maintenance with robots
Wind energy has been on a tear recently. For the first time in history, wind power was the second-largest source of electricity in the US for an entire day on last March 29th, surpassing coal and nuclear in particular. Wind energy was also the first source of new power capacities added in 2021 in the US and is leading on par with solar PV globally for renewable energy additions, with a global installed base that grew by 18% in 2020.
Yet scaling wind energy — extending the lifetime of aging on-shore wind farms as well as supporting the rapid development of larger turbines on-shore and off-shore — requires rethinking how we manage wind farms and automating operations.
In this context, we’re delighted to announce our investment in Aerones, the YC company that builds robots to automate wind turbine inspection and maintenance. We led their seed round, investing alongside historical investors Change Ventures, as well as Skype founder Jaan Tallinn (through his vehicle Metaplanet), Vinted co-founder Mantas Mikuckas, Printify CEO James Berdigans, Capitalia, Pace Ventures, and EcoSummit.
Wind Energy’s importance in a Net Zero future
According to the International Energy Agency’s “Net Zero by 2050” report, electrifying the power sector represents the most significant potential decrease in emissions’ reduction on the road to reaching net-zero emissions.
Though these changes will require transforming the scope of our global energy system at an unparalleled speed, the development of renewable energy is essential for two massive reasons:
- We need more power. As electric vehicles’ sales grow twentyfold between 2020 and 2030, and as the energy required for our buildings switches from fossil to electricity, we will need ever more power to charge EV batteries, light our homes and serve our growing needs.
- We need green power. The only way to gain more power responsibly is to move away from fossil-based power plants towards renewable power, which puts even more market pressure on the development of renewable energy projects.
Indeed, the pathway the IEA and others anticipate to meet this demand involves massive wind and solar PV acceleration, both of which are ready to scale and cost-effective complementary solutions.
As a result, the pace of development for wind projects will be multiplied by 4x between 2020 and 2030 — including an 18x growth for offshore wind projects — representing $810 billion in investments by then. Longer-term outlooks forecast that the wind industry should grow tenfold in the next 30 years.
Challenges with scaling wind energy
Though the wind industry continues to grow at a sustained pace, innovation in maintenance remains behind the curve, which poses operational, financial and safety challenges for operators of older turbine models as well as newer, larger models.
To start with, the existing global wind fleet is aging, which increases global maintenance costs and puts pressure on operators. In areas where wind energy was first scaled up in the late 2000s, like North America, the fleet was already 7 years old on average in 2020 and expected to be 11 years old on average by 2025. Europe shares many of the same challenges, as 28% of Europe’s turbine capacity was older than 15 years old in 2020 (up from 12% in 2016). Typical maintenance costs increase 15% in year 10–15 vs. year 5–10 over the asset’s lifetime, representing more than 10,000$/MW in additional costs as more repairs are needed.
As the fleet gets older, ensuring that increasingly frequent maintenance operations occur on schedule and at a reasonable cost is a real challenge. Indeed, maintenance typically requires shutting down the farm so that rope technicians can strap their harnesses and rappel down from the top of turbines to perform tasks manually. Not only is this hard and potentially dangerous work, but those operations are constrained by weather conditions and the availability of qualified staff to cope with the acceleration of projects.
Furthermore, as blades get larger — much larger — these operations get more complex, time-consuming, and risky. Indeed, technological development in the wind industry has improved significantly in the past 20 years. The unitary capacity of a standard windmill has gone from 1MW to up to 15MW today for offshore farms, due primarily to the growing size (and improved shape) of blades. These can now go up to more than 200 meters in diameter.
With the rapid development of off-shore farms, maintenance is especially challenging and risky due to the bigger size of blades (30% larger than onshore models), remoteness of sites, and even more complex and difficult weather conditions.
An acute need in a fast-growing segment
As a result, operations & maintenance (O&M) costs can easily make up 20–25 percent of the total levelized cost per kWh produced over the lifetime of a turbine, involving minor maintenance of electronics and hydraulics and other consumables to more heavy repairs of gearboxes and rotor blades that are particularly exposed to weather events, in particular erosion and lightning strikes.
The opportunities in this market segment are tremendous. The global inspection and maintenance market is expected to double in the next decade from more than $30 billion today. In addition, increasing performance with true predictive maintenance can avoid big potential losses: for example, leading edge erosion of the blades itself can impact energy production by ~5%, which represents losses of more than $13.5B in the industry per year.
To ensure the best performance of wind assets over time and reduce downtime, operators need to quickly and efficiently (i) detect, (ii) repair, and/or (iii) replace any issue that may hinder power production.
Recent improvements in detection involve digital solutions that monitor equipments’ performance in real-time and can detect some failures remotely, and regular aerial inspections (mainly with drones) that can detect external structural issues, like corrosion or hot spots, but require to stop operations for inspection.
But not only are those solutions limited to performing only certain types of detection — they cannot, for example, identify defects occurring inside the blades — but they still need human operators to perform the actual “hard work” of maintenance, i.e. cleaning, reparation and replacement.
This is where Aerones comes in.
Introducing Aerones: combine data and robots to improve the performance of the wind industry
Continuous innovation to serve their customers
After they joined YC, Areones became the first company in the world to provide maintenance for wind turbines using automated technology and robotics.
Their initial and core innovation is a unique and patented computerized winch system that controls a high-precision robotic arm. Controlled by rope, this design was inspired by the iconic movement of a spider riding on its web, and, just like the spider, it means they can move maintenance robots with precision (and elegance!) in every direction and in every location on the turbines.
The beauty and agility of Aerones’ robots is quite something — and we recommend checking out these videos to get a better sense of it all.
With this control system, Aerones offers a series of other robots that provide a large array of maintenance and repair services, such as leading edge repair, detailed external inspections, data analysis, lightning protection system tests, NDT ultrasound inspections, drainage hole cleaning as well as blade cleaning, de-icing and coating applications — all of which can be controlled remotely.
As opposed to human technicians, Aerones provides their customers with opportunities to run these operations safely, in most weather conditions, and for a fraction of the cost. Results are impressive: 6x less downtime and 30–40% cost savings versus current manned operations (for lighting system inspection for example). Importantly, these services can’t be performed by drones.
A team of technology hustlers with strong sales acumen
Providing all of those services is no small technological feat, and Aerones’ industry-beating performance is rooted in the company’s focus on R&D and engineering.
Dainis Krūze and Jānis Putrāms, who initially got noticed by YC with a video of a unique heavy-lift drone they released in 2018, decided to apply their knowledge to the wind industry. To achieve that, they teamed up with a world-class electric motor specialist, Andris Dambis, who had built the electric race car that won the Pike’s Peak Race multiple times.
Dainis and Janis are both serial technology entrepreneurs with 15+ of experience in technical fields around electronics, telemetry and energy. Behind sits a team of 30+ engineers that spans competencies like robotics, computer science, and manufacturing, who have built a track record in developing and packaging scalable hardware and software innovations to fulfill the company’s goal: automate all on-site operations, and ease their customers’ lives.
Since our first conversations, we have been impressed by their focus and their hustle.
The one-stop-shop for wind O&M, with predictive maintenance
Offering a full package of inspection and maintenance gives Aerones the ability to be the one-stop data platform for all O&M services for their clients.
By coupling the data they capture with other selected additional sensors (vibration, temperature…), Aerones is leveraging the founders’ experience in IoT and laying the ground to develop the first comprehensive predictive maintenance service in the industry.
The potential is huge as Aerones helps customers avoid high-risk operations, reduces inspection costs and time on blades, increases efficiency by combining several activities with one tool and improves communication (making it faster and automatic) with inspection suppliers.
Our conviction is that they will be able to offer the highest level of service in the industry, benefiting from the most comprehensive set of data from operations and maintenance devices.
Traction with industry leaders
It is encouraging to see that many of the world’s largest wind producers now work with Aerones. Indeed, their products are used by nine of the world’s ten largest wind companies, including Siemens Gamesa, Enel, GE and Vestas, and Aerones has now serviced over 3000 wind turbines in 17 countries across North and South America as well as Europe, with upcoming projects in Asia this year.
Long-term service agreements with these industry leaders validate Aerones’ competitive differentiation in the market. Aerones’ business has grown more than tenfold in Q1 year-on-year, despite the unfavorable Covid-19 context.
Aerones is also expanding into the booming offshore market: the company has secured 2.5M€ R&D funding from European Maritime and Fisheries Fund to adapt its robots to offshore conditions in partnership with SIA Saunor, GE Renewable Energy, and Tethys Energy Services.
At Future Positive Capital, we seek to support iconic European companies that apply technology to solve a global need.
Aerones is one of those companies — leveraging advances in robotics, IoT and software to accelerate the development of wind energy. If you’re interested in what we’re doing, please get in touch.
