After nine years of existence, Sulzer Schmid, a blade inspection and condition monitoring company, has exited to RES, the world’s leading independent renewable energy company and services provider. The acquisition will allow the combination drone and powerful analytics technology, together with RES’ engineering capabilities, enabling autonomous blade inspections to be carried out more quickly, safely and cost effectively.
Sulzer Schmid Laboratories AG (Sulzer Schmid) is a pioneer of autonomous drone inspections for the renewable energy sector and its AI-driven technology enables quicker, safer and more cost-effective blade inspections and repairs. The company’s proprietary technology, 3DX Blade Platform, which was deployed for the first fully autonomous UAV flight in 2018, has transformed condition monitoring of wind turbine blades using autonomous drones, providing 100% coverage and high-quality inspection data, backed by a powerful and user-friendly SaaS platform. The platform enables customers to build up lifetime records of wind turbine blades across entire fleets and portfolios. Through comprehensive trend analysis and benchmarking over time, platform users can gain valuable fleet insights that can define blade repair work and schedule preventive measures, resulting in significant O&M cost savings and production gains.
Founded in 2016 Tom Sulzer and Christof Schmid, the Zurich-based company has conducted 100GW of inspections and serviced more than 50 GW of turbines. The wind O&M market is expected to grow from $32.4bn in 2023 to $53.7bn in 2030 with larger turbines and more demanding weather conditions driving demand for more innovative approaches to blade maintenance.
Aiming to strengthen its ability to enhance the performance of blade assets, RES, the world’s largest independent renewable energy company, working across 24 countries with 4500 empolyees and active in wind, solar, energy storage, green hydrogen, transmission, and distribution has acquired Sulzer. With over 40 years in the industry, RES has delivered more than 27 GW of renewable energy projects across the globe and plans to bring more than 22 GW of new capacity online in the next five years. This deal allows combining Sulzer Schmid’s drone and analytics technology with RES’ engineering capabilities, making the process of conducting autonomous blade inspections faster, safely and cost-effectively.
Following the acquisition, Sulzer Schmid will start operating as RES, with all employees and technologies transitioning to RES. Its products such as 3DX Blade Platform and 3DX SmartPilot join RES’ growing suite of digital technologies, products and solutions. RES become a strategic partner of existing Sulzer & Schmid’s customers.
(Press release/RAN)
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