ONYX Insight, a provider of predictive analytics for the global wind industry, recently announced the launch of ecoBLADE, a condition monitoring system providing continuous visibility and analysis of blade behavior and health, unlocking savings for wind farm owners and operators worldwide.
EcoBLADE provides continuous monitoring of health from within an individual blade. With two 3-axis accelerometer sensors per blade, it can detect cracks, structural faults, and other damaging behavior early – even short-lived and high-energy events. This information provides owners and operators with vital and early intelligence to address issues weeks or months before they escalate into something potentially catastrophic.
This early detection provides ecoBLADE users with 10–100x cost savings, potentially higher for offshore turbines, within a short period. Some costs are relatively straightforward to calculate, such as a $300,000 to $500,000 blade replacement, or a complete turbine replacement, which can exceed $5 million. Indirect costs include the impact of business interruption, which can average about $100,000 per day in lost revenue.
“For too long, blade management has been defined by what operators find out too late – damage that’s already progressed beyond the point of targeted repair,” said Alexis Grenon, CEO of ONYX Insight. “EcoBLADE changes that fundamentally, giving teams continuous intelligence from inside the blade itself so they can act at the point when intervention is still feasible, targeted, and dramatically less costly.”
EcoBLADE can detect even minor issues before they are allowed to escalate to potential blade failures, losses, full turbine collapse, or even whole-site shutdowns. By continuously analyzing blade behavior and health, ecoBLADE gives operators the intelligence to run smarter and better-informed operations that prevent damage by providing insights into blade dynamics, fatigue and lifetime extension, and blade-specific conditions causing damage.
EcoBLADE identifies damage at the point when an up-tower repair is still viable, enabling operators to shift from reactive inspections to predictive maintenance powered by real-time alerts. As wind turbines grow larger and blade designs push further against engineering margins, the complexity and cost of blade failures is increasing. In the U.S. alone, blade maintenance exceeded $1 billion in 2025 for the first time, according to Intelstor, and that figure is growing. Blades are composite structures where manufacturing variability, operational age, and environmental conditions all contribute to internal defects that can escalate into structural failures with little external warning.
Blade health monitoring is typically focused on annual drone inspections. While advances in drone technology have made these efficient at identifying slow-developing defects, there are limitations. Drones can only see what’s visible externally, and generally only while the turbine is not in operation.
Lengthy intervals between drone inspections mean failures developing over a short period of time frequently go undetected. This means operators miss the opportunity to make low-cost, targeted repairs before they escalate.
Structural degradation deep within the blade, subsurface cracking, and bond-line failures are invisible until they’ve already become problematic and expensive. Combining drone technology with ecoBLADE provides thorough tracking of both internal and external blade conditions, giving wind-farm owners and operators added comfort through a comprehensive view of individual and site-wide blade health.
“Drivetrain condition monitoring has become an industry standard over the last decade, proven to reduce O&M costs and increase turbine availability; blade CMS is now on the same trajectory and the technology is ready,” Grenon said. “Every year, tens of thousands of new turbines are being installed around the world, and the sector continues to assert itself as a key source of clean energy. The scale of investment at risk makes intelligent asset protection a commercial necessity for businesses in the wind industry; ecoBLADE was created to do exactly that: maximize the productive life of every blade, on every turbine, across entire fleets.”
EcoBLADE is the result of more than a decade of combined OEM-validated R&D, informed by engineering projects, rigorous testing, refinement, and deep technical expertise.
More info www.onyxinsight.com
