Assessing and designing a new wind farm, onshore or offshore, involves a huge number of people across many functions. Typically, they work in different tools, and synchronising work can be complicated, time-consuming and comes with a risk that analysis assumptions fall out of sync. New digital platforms are changing this. But not all digital platforms are made equal when it comes to collaborative functions. Here, we share which features you should look for in a digital platform to make the biggest difference to the results your team produces.
By having your whole team collaborate in the same platform, everyone works from a shared set of data and analysis. Here, the important thing to consider is how many project functions are actually catered to in the digital platform. You want a platform that covers all technical functions, like yield analysts, electrical engineers and GIS analysts. But smart collaboration requires that everyone involved in the project, alongside the technical specialists—including financial analysts, project managers and decision-makers like Head of Development and Head of Engineering—can work within the same platform.
Vind AI is designed to support everyone: the engineers, analysts and project decision-makers. All project roles can be performed within the platform.
With traditional ways of working, people across all project functions spend a lot of time chasing down colleagues for the data and information they need to complete their part of the analysis. This may feel kind of like collaboration, since you’re interacting with your team members. But we believe collaboration should imply actually working together to solve challenges and find solutions. A central data repository allows you to save core data points and analysis inputs in a single location where all team members who need them can access them, any time they need them.
In Vind AI, you have a dedicated repository (we call it ‘the Library’) for all your project information, like data on turbines, foundations, cables, project configurations, financial numbers and GIS layers. The information is safely stored and accessible at any time, no matter where you work from. Relevant data, like turbine specs, can also easily be reused across multiple projects. EnBW is one of our users who finds Vind AI’s Library functionality transformative for their development process, in terms of time saved.
.png)
One of the greatest benefits of collaborating in a single platform is enabling your team to work simultaneously and collaborate in real time. Different functions can work on different components of the project at once, and their work will always sync up. If any of the data points and inputs change, everyone’s analysis that uses these data points will automatically update with the latest versions.
In Vind AI, your whole team can work in parallel through real-time updates. Since they started using Vind AI, Simply Blue Group’s team can complete multiple phases of their workflow concurrently, finding it “a big win in terms of the time saved.”
A digital platform should ensure flexible and secure user management. You want to be able to specify which resources should be available in which projects. This flexible access management makes it easy for each project team to get started with their analysis quickly. They have access to all the information they need, without drowning in superfluous data, as only relevant resources are made available to them.
Vind AI is designed to keep you in full control of sensitive data across all your project work. The access control system within Vind AI allows you to easily manage users and roles within your organisation (or with external partners), so that each team member can only access the projects they should. You can also grant or restrict access to specific data repositories independently of project-level permissions, allowing you to completely tailor access based on individual or team needs.
Your digital platform should include smart communication features, so your team can discuss and evaluate together more efficiently than through endless emails, instant messages and meetings.
In Vind AI, built-in project history and commenting features streamline communications within your team, no matter where they are in the world and when they are working. The changelog functionality also makes it easy to see who’s made which changes when within projects, so you can follow up directly with relevant people in your team as needed.
Beyond collaborating efficiently within your organisation, digital platforms can simplify collaboration with external partners, like consortium partners or consultants. Most fundamentally, you want to make sure your platform of choice is designed to safeguard data and project confidentiality when collaborating across companies, so that you can share the information you need, while protecting what you don’t want to share. You also want to consider the user-friendliness of the platform: can you onboard your partners with minimum effort (for both you and them)?
Vind AI is set up for external collaborations. For the 1GW Tuul Energy Offshore Wind Farm project in Estonia, Deep Wind Offshore and Valorem are collaborating within the Vind AI platform to design the park. By bringing their whole integrated project development team together in the same workspace in Vind AI, Deep Wind Offshore and Valorem can complete analysis faster and make better project decisions while safeguarding data confidentiality.
Developing wind projects demands collaboration with stakeholders like landowners and local communities. Your digital platform can make this collaborative work much easier by simplifying how you present and discuss key results with stakeholders.
In Vind AI, the user-friendly interface means you can present to stakeholders directly from the platform. This facilitates a more interactive experience, as you can answer any questions by clicking through in the platform to whatever details people are asking about.
To get the newest product updates, case stories and news releases, sign up for our monthly newsletter.
Please reach out if you are interested in seeing a demo, asking a question or sharing feedback.
