Windpower Data and Digital Innovation Forum

Dr George Garforth: George Garforth is a Client Engineer at NarrativeWave with experience in analyst and engineering roles in one of the largest wind operators globally. He works with wind operators to deploy cost-saving analytics on their assets and ensures that feedback from subject matter experts is captured and recycled to continually improve insights.

Founder, Investor, Board member, Keynote speaker, Coder, Advisor, Father, Dreamer.

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Before, I was responsible for leading and building the BCG Digital Ventures business across Asia, as part of the global BCG Digital Ventures Partnership.

I was joint CEO of an award winning strategic design firm, S&C, which was acquired by BCG in July 2014. I was responsible for client development, engagement management and overall growth of the business.

As CEO at Pocketweb, I was responsible for product innovation, partnerships, investor relations and business strategy. Pocketweb are building great location based services platforms for consumers and corporate clients on web and mobile.

As Head of Innovation at Vodafone, I was responsible for driving idea incubation and product innovation across the business.

As Head of Strategy at Vodafone, I was responsible for developing new business models, partnerships, evaluating mergers and acquisitions, analyzing competition, new technologies, regulations and new organisational structures.

At Booz Allen Hamilton (now Booz&Co) my responsibilities involved building client relationships, managing multiple consulting teams and growing the business as part of the global Telecoms & Media management team.
Specialties: Artificial intelligence, computer vision, embedded computing, autonomous vehicles, python, mobile telecoms, IT, hardware, financial services, banking, health, media, customer experience, entertainment, design, social media, marketing, business development, strategy and growth 

Patrick has over 20 years of experience in the wind energy industry, dating back to his 1999 visit to the NEG Micon wind turbine factory in Randers Denmark, where he found his calling. Today he is Head of Product Success for i4SEE TECH of Graz Austria. i4SEE TECH uses Augmented Intelligence to predict and diagnose faults in wind turbines. Inspection and maintenance can be planned proactively, avoiding costly downtime. i4SEE software applications can be quickly and easily setup, are simple to use and deliver clear, actionable advisory information. He has previous experience with high growth technology companies in wind energy as Senior Sales Manager for Greenbyte AB, a Swedish second level SCADA platform provider, and various commercial roles at NRG Systems, an American wind measurement hardware manufacturer. He is based in Gothenburg Sweden

Chris Kalima is the VP of Product Management at Intertrust Technologies Corporation, where he is responsible for the company’s data platform products. A firm believer in the transformative power of data, Chris has spent the past five years working closely with large enterprise customers in the energy, insurance, and automotive industries, helping them launch new data-driven products and solutions.

Prior to joining Intertrust, Chris worked at Planet OS, where he helped deliver an open API for the world’s weather and climate data. Recognized as an innovative solution by the United Nations at their inaugural Solutions Summit, the Planet OS Datahub streamlines access to data from leading weather agencies, including NOAA, NASA, and ECMWF.

A graduate of Harvey Mudd College, Chris holds a B.S. degree in Engineering.

 I am a mathematician with over 6 years' experience and a keen interest in machine learning, neuroscience, and the renewable energy. Since the last 4 years at Enercon GmbH I am responsible for driving the development of the SCADA system and wind farm controllers. Therefore, I am involved in projects related to grid integration of the renewables making them ready for today’s and future market requirements.

Dylan Mitchell is the Sales Account Director responsible for Wind and New Energy. He’s based in the company’s global headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Dylan has recently joined Akselos having spent the last ten years working across the offshore wind supply chain

Dr. Jonathan Masci is the Director of Deep Learning at NNAISENSE, a Swiss startup bringing AI to industrial process inspection, modeling, and control.  

His main interest is in the application of machine learning to computer vision, pattern recognition, graphs and time-series analysis with over 5000 citations in this field. The algorithms he developed for the leading steel manufacturer, ArcelorMittal, were the first application of deep learning to heavy industry. He serves as reviewer and program committee member for the top machine learning and computer vision conferences and journals (NeurIPS, PAMI, JMLR, IJCV, IJCAI).

With over 15 years of operations and engineering experience, Casey Martinez is an enthusiastic champion of sound statistical analysis, insightful visualizations, responsible machine learning, and cutting edge cloud computing. With an education in physics and a master’s degree in Data Science, he has developed models based on the laws of nature and deep neural networks. His passion for renewable energy can be seen in his long career touching the solar, wind, and energy efficiency industries. He is an avid golfer and kayak bass fisherman

Electrical Engineer graduate of Padua University, Marco has 8 years of experience in renewable energy industry. Since 2015, he has focused on O&M wind onshore with roles at country and global level as asset performance optimization manager. As Head of global O&M wind predictive maintenance, Marco is currently supporting the transition to an end-to-end data driven maintenance strategy, making “Digitalization” fit O&M Wind organization and processes. Among other activities, CMS analysis, Machine Learning applied on SCADA data and digital inspections have been integrated and introduced as input in the business-as-usual maintenance.

Raul Manzanas Ochagavia

MSc Industrial Engineer

Executive MBA UPC

Master in Renewable Energy by CENIFER

Working Bio:

·         Working in the Renewable & Wind Industry since 2004

·         First as Acciona Energia Head of International Asset Manager

·         By 2007 leading Technical R&D for Wind Technology within Acciona Energia

·         Working on Offshore Wind Technical and Business development, with special focus on Floating

·         Supporting Acciona Group activities in Offshore O&G

·         By 2014 moving to Acciona Windpower as O&M and After Sales Director

·         Being part of the Key group driving the Merge process with Nordex during 2015 and post integration

·         Once Nordex and Acciona Windpower holding several parallel positions

·         Global Head of Service Key Accounts plus Head of Services for Med, Africa and LATAM

·         Since 2017 Nordex Service Director for International Division (Americas, Africa, Spain and Asia-Pacific)

Previously to entering the Renewable sector holding several positions

·         General Manager of Real State and Construction Group at a Spanish company

·         PM, Area Manager and Assistant to CEO for Swedish Securitas Group within the Systems and Technology Business Line

Phillip Elflein is a technical engineer specialised in renewable energies.
He holds a Bachelor's degree in naval architecture and a Master's degree in wind energy technologies.
While studying in 2018, he has already worked in the technical operational management at Energiekontor AG and has been involved intensely in the area of data analysis based on SCADA data ever since.
A year later he wrote his Master's thesis about progressive damage prevention and long-term prediction of component failures.
As a project manager he is currently trying to set up a pool company for all Energiekontor owned wind farms to generate significant synergy effects in terms of damage prediction and spare parts warehousing

Alec Miller is the Vice President of Product at NarrativeWave, where he works with global renewable energy operators, helping them use machine learning and analytics to improve operations.  He has over fifteen years of experience in energy markets, across multiple technologies and countries.

Boaz Peled, Co Founder and CEO

Boaz founded First Airborne in response to operational challenges he faced as an operator of wind farms – assets which are by nature large, remote and external in their operation, and are therefore challenging to monitor and inspect. Boaz has been active in the wind power industry in EU countries for over a decade. He has developed green field projects, managed construction, installation and the financing of wind farms, and proceeded to manage and operate his own wind farms and those owned by 3rd parties. Prior to being an entrepreneur in the energy sector, Boaz was active as an investment manager in European real estate development and prior to that was active in US private Equity. Boaz holds a BA degree in Business & Finance from the IDC Israel in a joint degree with Kings College London, and is a graduate of the Zell Entrepreneurship program.

Resco’s fully customizable mobility solution helps companies across industries to master the digital transition process with ease.

Resco is the leading provider of mobile enterprise solutions with over 2.500 clients and 200.000 users worldwide. It is one of the global leaders in developing cross-platform mobile software solutions which can be utilized to add a mobile edge to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. This is the way we give users access to their business data anywhere and anytime.

The uniqueness of our products are in their flexibility. Resco Cloud offers more than 800 features, including creating custom forms, calendars, recording photos, interactive charts and maps, GPS tracking, electronic signatures, custom branding and much more.
 

Alejandro has a master degree in software engineering, he started his career working as SCADA engineer, soon he assumed the management of a 13 people team in charge of software development as well as 24/7 client support. Later on, he worked as a freelance SCADA engineer developing customized solutions for wind and solar clients. Finally, in 2012 Alejandro decided to set-up Green Eagle Solutions.
Since then the combination of ARSOS (Automated Renewable Smart Operations Software, formerly CompactSCADA), the technology developed in-house, and the strong expertise in renewable SCADAs of Green Eagle Solutions team, has enabled the company to provide competitive solutions to IPPs, ISPs and AM companies. 

Currently, ARSOS technology is achieving outstanding results worldwide boosting the performance of wind farms located in many different countries such as Spain, Portugal, UK, France, Italy, Ireland, Turkey, Croatia or Indonesia.

As the CEO of the company Alejandro is in charge of the company strategy, finances, business development and product development. In this way Green Eagle Solutions is becoming a well-recognized SCADA Solutions provider in the European wind energy sector, and being highlighted as one of the most innovative companies in the wind energy sector pushing forward digitalization and automation.

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• Established the Data Analytics Department and built the roadmap for Digital Transformation.
• Leading the Digital and Analytics Transformation strategy for 17+ GW of wind & solar operations and ensuring implementation across global teams located in 6 continents.
• Managing large team to handle development of digital and analytics products/apps and delivering end-to-end data management services (data creation, data networks, monitoring center, digital products, advanced analytics) to both internal and external customers.
• Planned & implemented SAP ERP modules enhancement, user level support, integration with web/mobile apps & SAP BW (Qlikview- BI)
• Driving significant business impact and customer satisfaction by developing predictive models & digital products, optimizing business processes and leveraging digital technologies based on AI, ML, Big Data, IoT, AR/VR, Chatbots and Drones.
 

Direct all aspects of HSE, O&M, commercial management, and trading. Deliver third party services and execute technical performance analysis to attain corporate objectives. Design and implement numerous operation strategies, methods, protocols, and procedures.

Annette is currently the Engineering Director for bp Wind Energy and oversees the technical teams supporting bp’s operational wind fleet including discipline & performance engineering, SCADA, maintenance optimization, and data analytics.  She brings a background of hands-on field experience in engineering & maintenance in both wind and oil & gas industries coupled with a role in leading bp Wind Energy’s data analytics journey over the past six years.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s in energy systems engineering from the University of Michigan.

Dr.-Ing Felix Bübl is responsible for developing the software application PowerSystem at ENERTRAG AG. It offers solutions for technical managers, asset managers, power traders and grid operators. In the last milenium, Bübl studied computer science and earned his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin. Before joining

João Formiga [M], MSc (Tech.), is graduated in electrical engineering, with a major on energy systems. Between 2013 and 2019, he worked for EDP Labelec’s Energy Consulting department, on innovation and development projects, from the root development to the implementation and maintenance phases. In 2019, he joined Renewable Technology area in EDP NEW as Project Manager in several H2020 projects, namely ATLANTIS, DURABLE and POCITYF.

Marc-Alexander Lutz holds a Master Degree in Engineering with the focus on renewable energies. He has been working in the group for reliability and maintenance strategies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology in Kassel, Germany since 2016. His scope of work includes assessing of different data sources to identify component condition and the implementation of processes for predictive maintenance.

This includes statistic based approaches to estimate the reliability of certain wind turbine components as well as site specific reliability indicators.

Furthermore it includes the development of predictive maintenance algorithms. A combination of neural networks and heuristics to decide if an anomaly is severe or not and the combination of those with the event data

Dr. Scott C. Evans is Principal Scientist Machine Learning at General Electric Global Research in Niskayuna, NY. He has 48 issued patents and over 50 publications in the areas of Machine Learning algorithms, wind power analytics, cyber-security, sequence analysis, and wireless network routing / Quality of Service (QoS). Scott holds a PHD in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Before joining General Electric Research, Scott served as a nuclear-trained Submarine Officer in the United States Navy. Scott teaches Information Theory, Machine Learning, Inference and Statistical Pattern Recognition as an Adjunct professor in the Graduate School of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Albany

Research focus includes renewable energy, environmental finance & economics

Multi Disciplined , experienced professional with 14 years of experience of working in various segments of energy industry. Skilled in operations, EPC, Oil & Gas, Subsea Engineering, Commissioning, IMR. I have extensive hands on experience with 500+ offshore days.

Strong academics and technical background with multiple Master's degree INDØKS , Industrial Economics, risk management , Asset management from University of Stavanger (UiS). 

Gloria has over 9 years’ experience in online condition monitoring of offshore and onshore wind turbines from awide range of manufacturers. She has worked with several asset managers and operators across Africa, Europe and North America, analysing vibration and SCADA data, to deliver valuable insights into turbine health and enabling clients to implement predictive maintenance strategies for their wind assets. Her current role at Uniper involves the development of diagnostic methods for identifying the onset and progression of component damage within wind assets. This work is demonstrating the value of data analytics in driving the optimisation of wind asset maintenance strategies

i4SEE TECH uses Augmented Intelligence to predict and diagnose faults in wind turbines. Inspection and maintenance can be planned proactively, avoiding costly downtime. Our software can be quickly and easily setup, is simple to use and delivers clear, actionable advisory information.

Malcolm is the head of DNV GL’s WindGEMINI service. Having worked with DNV GL since 2009, he has years of experience in the analysis of operational wind farms. He now leads the team developing DNV GL’s digital twin, applying the technology to help wind farm owners and operators improve turbine performance and extend lifetimes.

Iain has worked at Natural Power analysing wind farm performance using novel approaches since 2016 and has over 10 years of experience in the wind industry. During his career, Iain’s work has covered a wide range of operational and performance aspects of wind energy. This has included projects covering yield analysis and optimisation, operational modelling and decision making under uncertainty, evaluation of reliability centered maintenance applied to wind, reliability performance analysis, LCOE assessment and comparison of CFD and LIDAR measurements. His current role within Natural Power is focused on improving the performance of operating wind farms and value of O&M from a variety of operational data sources including SCADA, CMS, remote sensing technology and expert knowledge within the analysis, asset management and ControlCentre teams at Natural Power. This involves combining traditional engineering analysis techniques with modern data science tool kits to provide new insights into performance. Iain has a MEng in Mechanical Engineering with Aeronautics and a PhD on the reliability, operations and maintenance of offshore wind turbines, both from the University of Strathclyde

Nikolay Dimitrov (M): Nikolay Dimitrov has 12 years of professional experience in Wind Energy, and has been doing research at DTU Wind Energy since 2013. He has a Ph.D. in structural reliability of wind turbine blades, and his current scope of work involves applied statistics and probabilistic methods for the purpose of lifetime assessment and structural integrity.  Particular scientific interests include Machine Learning applications for data-driven forecasting and fault detection purposes, as well as risk-based decision modelling.

Peter has 17 years wind industry experience. He pioneered the adoption of LiDAR wind measurements and statistical techniques like Response Deficit Analysis in SCADA assessment. His interests include non-linear resource assessment techniques and extreme wind analysis. He is a member of IEC 61400-12-1, 15 and 50-3 project teams and the 50-4 team leader, and a member of the advisory board of IEA Wind Energy Annex 32. He has published widely on LiDAR, power performance testing, resource assessment, and related topics, and has designed many wind measurement and analysis campaigns. He is a member of the Leeds Sustainability Institute.

Starting from 2009, Richard Distl, joined the ImWind Team as a partner in project development and engineering. From that time on the windfarm operations management came into focus. With the company growth, Richard Distl focused on the operations management, which is now his primary scope of work. The digitalisation around asset operation is the foundation on which ImWind builds up it’s successful operational services. Furthermore, together with the company BaxEnergy, ImWind also offers a great software products called Energy Studio Pro and AssetStack, that help to manage renewable assets and the digitalisation efforts around them in the most efficient way

Managing projects of digitalization and data driven wind farm asset optimization, enabling optimal O&M processes and production enhancement. Vast range of knowledge and experiences from management to technical insights, including data science and physics.　As of 2019, published total 34 patents including 29 patent granted, 5 patents pending, and 31 scientific journal publications. 

M.Sc. Mechanical and Process Engineering Jan Schmitt previously served as a Regional Sales Director in Southeast Asia and since 2020 drives STEAG‘s WINDcenter business supporting developers, asset owners and operators in improving yields, forecasting maintenance needs and increasing revenue through digitalization. Jan has over 8 years of professional experience in the energy industry and has accompanied multiple local utilities on their digital transformation journey with a focus on optimising power assets in terms of performance and maintenance strategy. He also has an in depth background in power system modelling and data science.

CEO, VayuAI Corp. (2017-present), Cloud based AI Solutions for Wind

Industrial Advisory Board, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2014-present)

Founding Instructor US Dept. of Energy, Energy i-Corps (2015-2017)

CEO, executive and investor in SaaS/Cloud startups 2002-2014

Managing Director ans Investor, Intel Capital (1995-2001)

A graduate of ETH Zurich, Tom started his career developing robotics and advanced control systems. In the early ‘90s, he joined a US-based multinational medical tech company and headed up one of their global divisions. An entrepreneur at heart, he moved on to launch and run a high-tech startup in Silicon Valley. Upon returning to Switzerland, he rediscovered his passion for robotics and together with his business partner Christof Schmid he founded Sulzer Schmid, a leader in delivering world-class autonomous drone inspections and advanced analytics software for the wind industry

Dr. Joris Peeters holds a Msc and PhD in Mechanical Engineering and is since 2001 active in wind industry. He is currently Head of Digitalization at ZF Wind Power (Belgium), a leading global designer, manufacturer and service provider of wind turbine drive trains. He is leading the development of new digital solutions related to drive trains for wind turbines, including predictive methods for improved O&M

Mercedes Irujo / Head of Innovation Wind Projects / ACCIONA

At present, she is leading the Innovative Wind Projects of Acciona, which are deployed over two main lines: Extending Life of the assets and Optimizing the O&M of the fleet. Those two lines are based on techniques such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Physical Modeling representing the behavior of the Wind Turbines and its components.  She started in the Renewable Energy Sector 12 years ago in Acciona Windpower working on topics related to the Wind Turbine Design Process in the engineering department, in particular, with the Certification Process. Afterwards she changed to Acciona Energy, to the Utility Division, for the Life Extension Program in the Wind Energy Production Department as expert for Turbine Simulation where she stayed for 6 years and one year ago she moved internally to Innovation department. She did her studies in Mechanical Engineering at the Public University of Navarre and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) in Paris.

Co-founding Cognitive.Business as Director of Technology. Designing and creating the digital products to help engineers unlock the potential value in their data with easy-to-use machine learning. The solutions are secure, accessible, and provide engineers near-instant insight to decades of their industrial data, even on legacy systems.

BSc in Mechanical Engineering and a MSc in Finance.

Has been working in the renewables industry for almost 20 years, and has an extensive background from Wind Turbine design, assembly, testing & certification, production and operations. Headed the digital initiative from Kongsberg Gruppen ASA on designing a complete Wind Farm monitoring system and has for the last year heading the Wind Turbine Technology team at Equinor, with responsibility of new technology turbine approvals and turbine selections.

As asset management team lead within Ramboll Wind Ursula is concerned with data driven operation and maintenance. With over 15 years of experience in the offshore wind industry she has developed a broad knowledge on life cycle management tasks from the design phase on till decommissioning. As experienced FMECA facilitator she advises on asset risks for O&M optimization. With her strong background in signal processing and structural dynamics she is involved in projects as specialist for monitoring solutions of offshore foundations. This covers Big Data Analysis, Structural Health Monitoring, Continuous Monitoring and Digital Twin technologies. Having published in the field of digital twinning, load monitoring, lifetime extension, her link to research remains strong.

• Agricultural Engineer, University of Bonn
• MBA, Georgetown University
• Seven years with The Boston Consulting Group
• 2008-2012 CFO of Solarlite GmbH
• 2013-2019 CEO of Cassantec AG
• Sold Cassantec to ABB Power Grids, since then VP Business Development

Dr. Diego Galar is Full Professor of Condition Monitoring in the Division of Operation and Maintenance Engineering at LTU, Luleå University of Technology where he is coordinating several H2020 projects related to different aspects of cyber physical systems, Industry 4.0, IoT or Industrial AI and Big Data. He was also involved in the SKF UTC centre located in Lulea focused on SMART bearings and also actively involved in national projects with the Swedish industry or funded by Swedish national agencies like Vinnova.

He is also principal researcher in Tecnalia (Spain), heading the Maintenance and Reliability research group within the Division of Industry and Transport.

He has authored more than five hundred journal and conference papers, books and technical reports in the field of maintenance, working also as member of editorial boards, scientific committees and chairing international journals and conferences and actively participating in national and international committees for standardization and R&D in the topics of reliability and maintenance.

In the international arena, he has been visiting Professor in the Polytechnic of Braganza (Portugal), University of Valencia and NIU (USA) and the Universidad Pontificia Católica de Chile. Currently, he is visiting professor in University of Sunderland (UK), University of Maryland (USA), and Chongqing University in China.