With the green energy transition and electrification of our economies racing ahead, there has been a massive deployment of renewable energy to meet the rising demand for green electricity. Wind power has quickly scaled from a niche energy source providing 0.6% of global electricity in 2005 to a significant source providing 6.7% in 2021. Wind power deployment is accelerating and if this continues wind alongside solar, which provides 3.7% of the electricity today, will become the dominant energy sources providing an estimated 45% of global electricity in 2030. Despite this, with most wind turbines very early in their +20 years of use life, best practices around maintenance remain nascent.

In comes Aerones – a business that has developed a proprietary robot system that is used to inspect, clean and repair wind turbines. Before Aerones, the only method for maintaining wind turbines was manual, with human labor working on the blades at great height. Aerones technology allows for  greener, safer, faster, higher quality, and more cost effective services than that of traditional solutions. Aerones’ robot services wind turbines 4 – 6x faster enabling lower service costs and more wind power generation through reduced downtime. Aerones’ robot also eliminates the safety risks of human servicing, reduces servicing delays due to poor weather and enables better data collection on turbine maintenance needs. Through providing much cheaper and faster maintenance, Aerones’ disruptive service has the potential to revolutionise wind turbine maintenance – shifting it from reactive costly repairs to low-cost preventative maintenance that optimises wind power generation and supports the green energy transition.

A key focus for Blume are businesses like Aerones that scale innovations which reduce both customer costs and greenhouse gas emissions creating a highly compelling proposition. And so, we are delighted to partner with Dainis Kruze, Janis Putrams and the full Aerones team on the transatlantic scale-up of their service offering for global customers such as GE, Vestas and NextEra Energy among many others. We have rarely come across a team with such great ingenuity and execution excellence – more than enough to improve the maintenance of the hundreds of thousands of wind turbines already installed globally and the many more to come!