I have always been a strong supporter and an advocate of long-term care of any asset, whether it is my Harley-Davidson or a utility owned large-scale industrial equipment, such as a wind turbine or a whole flock of them. I mean, it is just common sense that you want to take care of the things you love and the things that are the cornerstone of your life and business.
For any long term successful ownership strategy to work, there are multiple aspects that must be considered and conditions that must be met. First, you must fully understand the life cycle of your assets and the goals you are setting for them. Secondly, you need to implement a successful strategy to reach those goals. Sounds simple, right?
When you consider any large industrial equipment portfolios, asset management will quickly grow into a very complex and deep subject. For simplicity, I will concentrate in a very specific niche of the entire life cycle and value chain – data driven holistic maintenance and my observations in wind energy around it.
Traditionally, asset management is divided into five main categories: planning, acquisition, operation, maintenance and disposal. You can further divide these categories into multiple subcategories, and the rabbit hole really goes deep with this one. There are tons of books and studies available and a myriad of experience around the world in countless industries of successful implementation of different asset management strategies.
Asset management, in principle, is nothing new, but as always, the devil is in the details. The core principles like value-driven, continuous improvement, efficiency and holistic views have been around a while and are being used across industries on a daily-basis, at least in theory. However, while the fundamentals of asset management are largely unchanged, its implementation has been transformed by advances in IT and, more recently, AI.
Which brings us to the point of this post.
To implement a successful data-driven holistic maintenance strategy and reap the benefits of that new AI scheme your executive board just purchased, you need few things. Most crucially, data. For an outsider this might sound silly. Why would the data be a problem for you, you own the equipment, right? “Just go and get the data from your machine”.
This will lead me to another can of worms, but it is essential to the broader story, so I will give you an example from another world and try to keep it short.
When I was getting my driver’s license in the early 90’s and started to understand anything about the world, I remember my grandfather saying how important it is to take your car to the authorized dealership only for maintenance, as using any other garage or shop would ruin your warranty. This really was not an issue for me, as I was nowhere near a car with a warranty at that time, but I could understand the implications of it. The car manufacturing industry had essentially created themselves a monopoly of vehicle maintenance and they had no intention of letting anyone on their playground. Car maintenance guides were treated as war secrets and if parts availability was not very difficult or impossible, it was at least expensive.
It is no secret that maintenance is almost always a very significant part of any equipment manufacturing business. In wind energy, roughly 15-20% of the global OEM revenue comes from service and maintenance. And more importantly, the margins in service and maintenance are typically much higher than on the manufacturing side of the business. In addition, maintenance is an on-going operation generating cash flow well beyond manufacturing itself. In this context, it is easy to understand why the OEMs try to protect this business model as much as they can. Often to the point where the only way to change the status quo is regulation.
And this is exactly what happened in Europe in 2024 when the EU adopted the Repair Clause. It was a culmination of a process that started over 30 years earlier. And while a lot has improved since my grandfather’s advice and you can have your car serviced in any certified 3rd party shop with no impact on your warranty, the work is still not complete.
And do not get me wrong, I am not advocating government regulations any more than is absolutely necessary, but it is a fact that some things need to be regulated. Or at least guided in a way that enables true free choice for the end-user or asset owner. They should have the option to manage their assets in the most efficient and smartest way possible, including with emerging 3rd party technologies and services. And you cannot do that without the data.
So, what has this to do with wind energy and asset management, you may ask.
Well, for years the wind energy OEMs behaved exactly like the car manufacturers before them. I am not aware of any board of directors which would voluntarily give up a market advantage or a gravy train they are sitting on top of. And why should they? That is not how the system works.
But then came the EU Data Act of 2025. For years, I knew that the process for this regulation was ongoing, but to be fair, I had very little expectations that anything significant would come out of it. At least, not quickly.
I am happy to admit that I was wrong.
I saw the first significant development when I was attending the SkySpecs Annual Forum in late 2024 where a Siemens Gamesa’s model of EU Data Act compliant data sharing service was shown. I did not expect that. First, the forum was being held in Michigan, US and you would not expect EU regulation driven change to land on the US shores so quickly. But it did, and just few weeks ago SkySpecs’ Allan Larsen shared a post revealing that both Vestas and Siemens Gamesa are now expanding the data access to include raw vibration data during warranty and FSA, free of charge. And more than likely, globally.
This is exactly the kind of development you want to see coming out of regulation – companies turning the regulation into competitive advantage, instead of trying to lock everything down. The entire industry benefits greatly from these types of advances and I fully expect to see new innovative 3rd party data-driven holistic maintenance services emerge soon.
