SGS rides the headwinds of green energy with Azure IoT solution that optimizes wind turbine capacity

Taking advantage of a green development opportunity   

Installed off the coast of the Guandong Province, more than 315 wind turbines in the Three Gorges Yangjiang Shaba Offshore Wind Farm represent China’s first million-kilowatt offshore wind farm. Safely producing enough energy to meet the requirements of 2.4 million households,1 this farm is one of the most impressive examples of China’s installed wind power capacity—the largest in the world at almost 329 gigawatts in 2021.2 

Today, as China moves from a period of rapid plant construction—the country produced more than 70 percent of global wind energy in 20213—its wind power industry is looking to maximize the profitability and longevity of its expensive physical assets. Business opportunities abound as companies seek ways to optimize turbine and infrastructure maintenance. Enter SGS, a leading global testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) company headquartered in Geneva. For more than 30 years, SGS has provided TIC services in China. It established a service network with 90 branches and more than 200 laboratories, positioning SGS well to take advantage of a burgeoning market for renewable, energy-related testing services in China—specifically, online oil fluid monitoring. 

“According to our estimates, the market size for online oil fluid monitoring in China will exceed 100 million renminbi (RMB), or USD14 million,” says Walter Zheng, Deputy Director of Electrical & Electronics Consumer, Connectivity & Products, SGS China. “This is driven by the continuous improvement of oil fluid online monitoring technology and the increasing demand from customers for predictive maintenance of their equipment.” 

“Our goal is to provide customers in this emerging market with efficient, digitally driven equipment maintenance and operation services,” adds Luke Lu, Product Manager of Digital, Insight, Innovation, Connectivity, Engineering, Electrical & Electronics Consumer, Connectivity & Products, SGS China. “By leveraging digital means, we can expand our existing expertise and services. Traditionally, we provide oil analysis from samples manually collected and then delivered to our laboratories.”

This would solve a significant challenge for wind farms everywhere. Imagine an installation of several hundred turbines in a remote mountainous region. It would take a small team, climbing an average of three turbines a day, almost four months to collect oil samples destined for analysis at a lab. While this offline method provides accurate test results, there is a price. 

“When wind farm operators receive their oil analysis results months after the collection, it prevents them from promptly responding to potential risks associated with the turbines,” explains Zheng. “There is an increased risk of unplanned downtime, potential equipment damage, and reduced service and profits. We wanted to combine digital tools with our expertise in oil analysis to help customers monitor real-time changes in key parameters of oil used in wind turbines.” 

Choosing a Microsoft Azure IoT solution boosts customer trust

The challenge for SGS lay in ensuring that any data collected and analyzed via a digital solution would be as accurate as the information generated through the offline method. “Every customer asks, ‘Will the data from the digital solution be as reliable as what we are used to getting with SGS?’” says Zheng. “While we do use sensor calibration, certification, and lifecycle management to gain customer trust and acceptance, we also needed a technology partner to build an IoT solution that would generate accurate results all the time.”

SGS turned to Microsoft to solve this issue. In early 2022, SGS Chief Executive Officer Frankie Ng announced a partnership between SGS and Microsoft to accelerate SGS’s digital strategy.4 As stated by Ng: “Microsoft is the natural partner for SGS …. Together, we will leverage our combined expertise and accelerate our digitalization to enable a better, safer, and more interconnected world.”  

Working closely with Microsoft under the auspices of Project Dragon—an initiative to facilitate IoT solutions targeted to specific industries—SGS used Microsoft Azure cloud services to create its new online oil diagnostic service. Dubbed Oil Condition Monitoring (OCM-Online®), the solution takes advantage of Azure IoT Edge, Azure IoT Hub, and three Azure database services. 

“Microsoft Azure cloud services are one of the few digital solutions that can meet our requirements for security, compliance, and reliability,” says Zheng. “Azure offers a rich and flexible set of IoT components, continuous technological advancements, and global responsiveness and support. Choosing Microsoft Azure helps SGS drive the implementation of its digital strategy more effectively. Working with Project Dragon, we’re looking forward to developing more solutions with Microsoft.”

OCM-Online® empowers wind farms with continual oil monitoring

By partnering with Microsoft, SGS combines its experience in device engineering and laboratory oil analysis with Azure cloud-based services to deliver a competitive, subscription-based service to wind farm operators. The STATS-PLUS® IoT device installed on each wind turbine is a proprietary device created by SGS. It collects oil data from up to three sensors, providing information on more than 17 parameters, including viscosity, temperature, and ferromagnetic particle counts. “Our devices passed the IoT Plug and Play and Edge Managed certificates in Azure, and allow for quick deployment and efficient management,” says Lu. “We will be using IoT Hub provisioning services to pre-provision the edge devices before they leave the factory, streamlining this step for our customers.”

Azure IoT Edge collects the data from the devices, performs local processing, and uploads it to Azure IoT Hub, which manages the interface between edge devices and the cloud, processing, integrating, and parsing the data before handing it off to two Azure databases. “Azure IoT Hub eliminates the need for building a dedicated streaming database and relying on third-party IoT SDKs, providing a stable and reliable IoT connectivity solution,” explains Zheng. 

Azure Cosmos DB handles real-time storage of IoT data coming from the edge, enabling time-sensitive operations, such as alarms. Azure Blob Storage holds IoT data with long-term retention requirements, optimizing costs by offloading the processing load from Azure Cosmos DB, which is more suitable for real-time operations. A third database, Azure Database for MySQL, stores and manages business-related data, such as sensor location and account information. 

Everything comes together for the customer via a web-based dashboard that continuously delivers real-time data. Customers view a map that shows device status and key oil parameters. The solution delivers alarms based on pre-set triggers. The dashboard is also used by SGS lab techs who compare real-time data with manually collected oil samples. In the future, lab techs will also compare online data with historical data to give more insight to customers.

Other benefits for wind farm operators include:

•    Reduced costs and risk. Wind farm operators benefit from proactive monitoring and timely alarms delivered through SMS and email to quickly identify changing trends in key oil indicators. They can take proactive steps to schedule maintenance or seek consultation from SGS oil experts to avoid costly downtime or equipment damage. 

•    Increased productivity. Better managed and serviced wind turbines operate longer and more profitably, enabling customers to get the most out of their expensive assets, while ensuring competitive and uninterrupted energy production.

•    Reduced environmental impact and improved sustainability. Instead of following a prescribed schedule for oil changes, wind farm operators use OCM-Online® to change oil only when it’s actually needed. This reduces recycling fees and wasteful oil changes.  

SGS makes good on sustainable development to drive green energy business

OCM-Online® is a signature offering from SGS that’s set to capture a lucrative, expanding green energy market. It offers exactly what established wind farm operators need: an efficient and digitally driven equipment maintenance and operation service that’s faster—but just as reliable—as the traditional method of collecting oil samples and sending them to the lab. 

Thanks to its new solution and an ongoing partnership with Microsoft, SGS benefits from: 

•    Fast inroads into a growing market. “From proof of concept to offering our first test cases to customers took only a few months,” says Zheng. “SGS used Azure services to achieve digitalization and IoT enablement of traditional oil fluid testing capabilities efficiently. We have responded to market demands faster with more reliable digital services.”

•    An extensible platform to expand the business. OCM-Online® is customizable, making this solution applicable to many industries. Not only wind turbine companies but shipping and manufacturing businesses in China use the OCM-Online® system to monitor the condition of their assets. “Thanks to the collaboration between SGS and Microsoft, the application scenarios for OCM-Online® will reach other industries,” says Zheng. “Companies requiring lubrication management and predictive maintenance for their high-value equipment will all be potential customers. OCM-Online® further solidifies SGS’s leading position in the digital transformation process of the testing, inspection, and certification industry.” 

•    An accelerated cash flow. SGS offers OCM-Online® in a subscription-based business model, which provides a consistent cash flow compared to less frequent payments for manual data collection and lab analysis and reporting. 

•    Improved customer relationships. Continuous monitoring increases customer touchpoints and a flexible solution allows for responsive tweaks to accommodate customers’ evolving needs. “By providing personalized services, the OCM-Online® solution increases customer ‘stickiness,’” explains Lu. “We are able to help them address pain points through predictive maintenance work, continually creating value.” 

•    A future-proof solution to build competitive advantage. SGS recognizes that emerging AI is having a profound impact on many industries, including predictive maintenance. “Working with AI capabilities in Azure, SGS will be able to provide efficient state-of-the-art services for customers, boosting our competitive advantage,” says Zheng. “We could train an AI model to analyze customers’ historical inspection data and build models to provide more accurate online predictive analysis.”

•    Enhanced reputation for sustainable development. Sustainability is a core part of SGS’s corporate ethos and accelerating the efficiency and stability of the wind power industry with solutions such as OCM-Online® underscores that commitment. “Whenever we can help customers in the green energy sector to reduce costs and increase efficiency, we help to create a better world,” concludes Zheng. “Taking OCM-Online® as an example, there’s no better way to showcase the long-term benefits of our relationship with Microsoft.”  

https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/innovation-technology/china-clean-energy-investment/

https://www.evwind.es/2023/01/14/countries-that-produce-the-most-wind-energy/89725

https://www.iea.org/reports/wind-electricity

https://www.sgs.com/en/news/2022/01/sgs-announces-collaboration-with-microsoft-to-develop-new-digital-tic-services