DNV GL: Offshore Wind to See Benefit from Robots with AI

DNV GL has released a new position paper that describes how Artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly automate operations over the next several years in the solar and wind industries and boost efficiencies across the renewable energy sector.

The position paper “Making Renewables Smarter: The benefits, risks, and future of artificial intelligence in solar and wind” explores where artificial intelligence like machine learning will have an impact to increase efficiencies in the renewables industry. Areas include decision making and planning, condition monitoring, robotics, inspections, certifications and supply chain optimization, but also the way technical work is carried out, DNV GL explained.

“We expect the installation of more sensors, the increase in easier-to-use machine learning tools, and the continuous expansion of data monitoring, processing and analytics capabilities to create new operating efficiencies—and new and disruptive business models,” said Lucy Craig, director Technology and Innovation at DNV GL – Energy.

According to DNV GL, solar and wind industry stakeholders will see artificial intelligence benefits in several areas, including robotics, crawling robots, supply chain optimizations by autonomous driving robots, autonomous drones with real-time artificial intelligence-supported analysis and AI applications accelerating due diligence, reducing the time investment of planning and analysis that today requires many human hours.

In addition, artificial intelligence will tend to automate decision making, driving costs out of energy development, production, and delivery in the solar and wind industries.

For most players in the renewables industry, building artificial intelligence systems that are stable, progressive and reliable requires sets of knowledge and data from across many different projects.

To get adoption rates right, a deep knowledge of the domain of industry experience is key, DNV GL concluded.