The company’s NKr22m ($3.8m) Windsense project – a joint effort with instrumentation specialist NCEI (Norwegian Centres of Expertise Instrumentation) – aims to adapt equipment and maintenance methods common in the maritime and offshore oil and gas industries to cut unplanned shutdowns at wind farms.

As well as improving reliability via remote control and monitoring, the system gives operators the option to temporarily run the turbines at a lower capacity in advance of required maintenance, which would further reduce downtime.

Kongsberg Maritime project manager Oddbjørn Malmo says: “This system will primarily be an instrument for monitoring the technical condition of the wind turbine and the life-cycle of the components used.