Innovators
No matter how many problems an idea solves, how much money it can save or how technically brilliant it is, there is no guarantee that it will succeed in the market.
You may have the knowledge to innovate but lack specific market or business knowledge, or you may have a great technology but it doesn’t quite address a current industry need. We help transform your innovative ideas into commercial success, or explain to you why this is unlikely.
We provide business advice steeped in a deep, hands-on understanding of the economics, market and technology of the sectors we are active in. This enables us to:
- Communicate the impact of new innovations on the cost of energy
- Explain the market you will need to break into – how it works now, how it is changing, who to engage with and how to establish the best relationships
- Describe the technology landscape that you are moving in to, including your competitors.
We take the time to understand you and your long-term wishes. Our route-to-market work helps develop then implement plans for market entry. We help develop your value proposition, provide detailed independent assessment of CAPEX, OPEX, cost of energy benefits and to support effective communication strategies, taking into account competitors, collaborators, clients and other stakeholders.
We work with you to shape your product and technology development processes, test and demonstration plans and technology roadmaps. We use our technical and engineering expertise and experience of wind turbine and other product development from early concept to series production – in some cases getting deeply involved in engineering decisions, changing the direction of product development.
We facilitate failure modes and effects analyses (FMEAs), reliability and OPEX assessments, and route to market risk reviews to help balance and focus technical and commercial resources in the most important areas. We help you track key indicators such as impact on the cost of energy and market changes during product development, so that you can react early.
We help with IP protection and freedom to act searches, putting you in touch with domain experts at the right time.
We identify funding sources, including export credit schemes, and help you access R&D tax credits.
We have contacts in many potential industry collaborators and clients and we can provide you with ‘soft landings’ with the senior contacts that you may otherwise never reach.
At any stage in product development, whether for multinational businesses, established suppliers, university spin-outs or micro SMEs, we work flexibly and energetically to accelerate your route to success.
Investors
Combining market, economic and technology understanding, we help investors make the right decisions by our straight talk. Our clients invest in renewable energy assets, suppliers and technology businesses.
For renewable energy projects, whether pre- or post- construction, our due diligence includes assessment of costs, revenue and lifetime risks, whether commercial, regulatory, technical or environmental. We use senior people with long experience of technology and operations of renewable energy projects, enabling us to flag real issues and help resolve them.
To support investment in businesses, our due diligence includes assessment of technology and commercial readiness, costs and benefits. We look at the capability of teams and the route, time and cost to market, including plans for test and verification.
Investors often retain us to maximise value post investment, implementing our recommendations for the next tranche of investment or in maximising the value of assets.
We work both with experienced investors in renewables and those making a first step into the space. We provide landscaping and target selection services, often built on value chain and market demand and supply studies across multiple territories and areas of supply.
We work flexibly and interactively, often with tight timescales, and frequently changing the course of investment decisions, reducing risk and saving significant amounts of money.
After investment, our asset management, optimisation and lifetime extension services help investors get the best returns from generating assets. We provide effective, efficient, flexible and cost effective services building on real-world experience in designing and operating projects over the last 30 years.
Whatever your investment, our reputation is for robust, straight-talking, creative, independent advice grounded in long-term industry experience.
Suppliers
The wind industry has grown dramatically over the last 20 years. We have been part of this story as wind energy consultants and are now at the heart of industrialisation in the UK. We help businesses to engage with wind industry customers and to achieve success in supplying to the industry.
Our rapport with wind industry purchasers and R&D leaders gives us insights into the needs and motivations of specific customers. A number of our team have worked for many years within supply chain businesses, understanding how to be profitable while delivering excellence to the industry.
We provide:
- Support for port owners
- Diversification advice for oil and gas companies
- Support for SMEs to make the most of their opportunities
- Market and technology forecasting for business leaders, shaping their strategies
- Design review and business development support in shaping and bringing new products to market
- Targeted industry intelligence, identifying specific opportunities and enabling confident decision-making
- Introductions to decision-makers and facilitating relationships
- Advice in establishing manufacturing facilities in the UK
- Support in adapting to the needs and culture of a fast-growing sector.
We have helped to align the strengths of major aerospace, oil and gas, and automotive players with the wind industry and supported their engagement with key wind industry players. From a low baseline, these companies are now employing hundreds of engineers and technicians serving the wind industry and embracing the cultural change needed to respond to the wind industry’s rapid growth and technical challenges.
On behalf of the UK Government, we undertook a comprehensive assessment of UK ports, leading to the first ‘ports prospectus’ for the offshore wind industry. We used this in engaging potential inward investors and linking them with UK port owners and national and regional enablers. We have provided both commercial and engineering support both to ports and their potential new users, using our industry knowledge and contacts to bring the right people together and assessing port infrastructure for manufacturing and construction use.
We have long-term relationships with start-up technology providers as they seek both investment and customers. We have often changed the direction of technology activities, through our combined technical and market understanding.
Project Developers
Our experience of wind turbine design, wind farm implementation and the supply chain places us a strong position to smooth the path of your project development, whether onshore or offshore.
We lead the way in preparing supply chain plans and local content assessments for large projects, required as part of the auction process in the UK, and important in building stakeholder support in all markets.
We carry out early feasibility studies and prioritise project pipelines, based on strategic objectives and to minimise costs.
We help you to communicate with local and national stakeholders the opportunities projects bring to local businesses throughout the lifecycle. We build supplier databases and supplier filtering arrangements to enable you to engage with the supply chain in the way that suits you.
As part of the planning the application and stakeholder engagement process, we prepare reports assessing the potential economic impact of projects, covering the development, manufacture and construction work, considering gross value added, job-years of employment, percentage local content and other such measures. Our methodologies are robust and proven.
We run spatial cost analyses and derive merit orders for specific projects or large areas where development could occur, using GIS tools and considering costs now and well into the future.
We model the long-term levelised cost of energy (LCOE) potential for different technologies, helping to focus on reducing cost of energy.
Supply chain and procurement strategies are critical in optimising costs. Our demand and supply analyses and supplier assessments support in-house teams delivering savings not just on the current project, but also looking further ahead.
We provide thought-leading pieces on future cost of energy, technology and supply chain strategy to help in government, investor and other stakeholder relations.
Often, project developers come to us when they want to do new things, think in new ways and solve tough problems.
Asset Owners
For purchasers of operating renewable energy projects, we carry out technical due diligence reviews of documentation, warranties, energy production and wind resource, visiting each site to confirm operation, condition, layout, electrical connection and take meter readings. Using our advice, purchasers negotiate better deals for assets and start ownership with a clear understanding of their performance, with prioritised plans to address issues.
For asset owners, we use our deep experience of turbine design and operation to provide advice, hands-on management and optimisation of assets to maximise lifetime value and minimise risk.
We provide asset management advice, helping to select and contract suppliers in a way that incentivises long-term value creation and working to address key cost and performance issues.
We recognise the importance of both increasing revenue and reducing OPEX to increase returns. We calculate and report lost production from assets by comparing actual production with forecasts of expected production and support resulting dialogue with turbine suppliers or third-party service providers, in order to maximise energy production.
We manage improvements to noise and other curtailment conditions, thereby minimising lost energy.
We specify the requirements for portfolio SCADA systems to replace the legacy systems and manage the purchasing, supply, factory testing and installation and commissioning of new systems.
We deliver life extension assessments by combining analyses of remaining fatigue life, failure modes analyses, inspections and commercial modelling tools. These tools explore the benefits of repowering, main component upgrades, replacement controllers, improved condition monitoring or simply increased inspections to manage operation beyond the end of the original design life.
Enablers
We help enablers (such as trade organisations, regional public bodies and non-governmental public funders and partnerships) understand renewable energy opportunities and maximise the value of their support. Our work contributes to efforts to drive down the cost of energy through technology and supply chain development.
We advise decision makers on RD&D funding, industry policy and ways to facilitate growth.
We provide common methods for calculating and communicating cost reduction, local content and economic impact, addressing tough questions where technology, economics, market and policy issues come together.
We produce robust independent analyses, identifying key issues facing countries, regions and industry. We assess economic readiness, identify supply chain capability gaps and analyse other barriers and opportunities relating to the deployment of renewable electricity generation.
Our targeted reports facilitate diversification into renewables, investment, innovation and supply chain development.
Local companies understand and make the most of the opportunities through the supply chain support programmes we deliver for regional enablers.
We also provide specialist assessment, due diligence, audits of technical and commercial readiness, and incubation support for several large RD&D funding programmes.
With our help, you can make a real difference to the sectors and businesses that you seek to develop, answering tough questions, identifying and unlocking new opportunities.
Governments
Governments need to ensure energy supply is secure, affordable, sustainable and providing local benefit. Along with energy system management, renewable energy offers a solution to this “energy quadrilemma” as an alternative to traditional electricity generation.
Our industry dialogue and experience delivers a real-world perspective to government departments around the world on matters of economics, technology and supply chain.
Governments use our independent insight and thought-leading analysis on cost reduction, the market and the impact of policy to guide decision-making. We find ways to simplify and address complex challenges.
Increasingly, this involves providing a holistic view of the costs and benefits of electricity production that embraces the concept of societal cost.
We help governments assess the opportunity to maximise local and inward investment and exploit export opportunities and provide hands-on support to make things happen.
We have provided members of our team for long-term secondments to help develop effective industry strategies drawing on high- quality of industry dialogue and understanding.
Governments work with us to shape and deliver RD&D programmes up to full-scale testing of offshore wind innovations.
Our government-sponsored incubation support for companies covers both technical and commercial advice for start-ups.
We find and filter local suppliers that meet wind industry purchaser needs and run supply chain events supporting inward investment by introducing relevant local companies to purchasers.
We have also led outreach activities focused on sectors such as aerospace and oil and gas, offering ways to mitigate market risks by supplying more widely while bringing new expertise to renewables.
Universities
Many universities undertake research and generate intellectual property that is highly relevant to renewable energy sectors. They provide a vital source of fresh thinking, analytical capability and technical expertise that the industry needs to continue in the journey beyond ‘subsidy free’.
We help universities and associated spin-outs to better understand and communicate the benefits of their innovations, secure public funding, attract third party investment, engage with industry decision makers, collaborate internationally and successfully take their ideas and capabilities to market.
We have a track-record of providing timely business insight to help commercialise technology.
Universities and spin-outs use us to test their ideas, as a proxy for eventual industry clients, and apply “real world” technical experience to shape innovations in order to maximise the potential for cost of energy reduction. We advise them on how to optimise product development plans to deliver risk reduction and achieve proof of concept quickly and cost-effectively.
We also provide market and business knowledge to complement technical advances. We deliver objective, robust and detailed assessments of the full impact of your innovations on the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for the end customer. This is a powerful way to demonstrate the value of your idea to potential customers. We also identify the size and attractiveness of the future market for ideas, including the potential competitors and collaborators.
We develop ‘go to market’ strategies, communication plans and customer value propositions. Often spin-outs must decide whether to license technology to an end-user or work with a supplier to maximise value. Knowing the structure of the industry and the workings of individual companies is essential in charting the right course.
Our careful use of our network of senior contacts in investors, leading suppliers, project developers and enablers across the world helps transform ideas into successful businesses.
Whether you have a track record in renewables or have potentially exploitable IP, we can work with you to maximise their benefit.
Port Owners
We have a strong track-record in helping to build a strong relationship between port owners and offshore wind players. This began with our ground-breaking work in 2009 in the UK, the first market to accelerate in offshore wind.
At that time, we published UK Ports for the Offshore Wind Industry: Time to Act, and a UK Ports prospectus. Back then, we set out the opportunities and challenges for industry and government to address if UK ports were to meet offshore wind demand. We supported the major wind turbine suppliers and others, from their very first visits to ports.
Since then, we have worked extensively with governments, enabling organisations, suppliers and ports around the world to help them understand the infrastructure that is required to deliver current and future offshore wind projects and select the most suitable locations for development.
We look at existing foundation and installation concepts and at the impact of future innovations to reduce cost, both in bottom-fixed and floating foundation technology. We establish requirements, help design facilities and build robust commercial cases for public and private investment, both in construction and operation, maintenance and service infrastructure, taking into account evolving technology and market needs, as the offshore wind industry develops. Recently, we wrote a Strategic review of UK east coast staging and construction facilities report for the Offshore Wind Industry Council
Whether you are already active, or want to assess opportunities for securing business from offshore wind now or over the next 5-10 years, then we can help.
Oil and Gas Companies
Our drive to help the industry grow the supply base to offshore wind, meant it was almost inevitable that we would grow expertise in helping oil and gas companies to de-risk by diversifying. We also expect a continuing benefit of applying offshore wind experience back to the oil and gas sector.
Oil and gas companies have strong capabilities in areas such as offshore operations and asset management, but challenges in adapting to the different culture and demands on cost of offshore wind, while experiencing tough commercial times.
If you are seeking to understand the opportunities in renewables or implement a market entry plan then we can provide you with all the information and contacts that you need.
SMEs
We understand life as a small business – including both the opportunities and challenges it provides. Although renewables is an industry dominated by major players, many small companies play a key role in delivery of local or niche services. Others have led the way, bringing novel wind turbine component and other technologies and processes to market that have helped drive down cost of energy.
Whether you are an innovator or a supplier with value to add in other ways, we are committed to helping you to make the most of your opportunities. We can also help you access public and private for RD&D funding, commercialisation support and business growth.
Companies and organisations we have worked with include: