The £1 Million Blade: Can AI Save Offshore Wind from Itself?

How physics-informed AI is bridging the gap between intuition and data in one of the world's most complex industries

What if a simple blade repair on a wind turbine could escalate from a £50,000 problem to a £1 million catastrophe? This is the reality of the offshore wind industry, an industry grappling with immense delays and spiralling costs. It's a world of high stakes, where the invisible forces of waves and weather dictate the success or failure of multi-billion-pound projects.

In a recent Project Flux podcast, we journeyed into this world with Jana Stella, the CEO and founder of NeuWave Technologies, who is using a very different kind of AI to tackle these monumental challenges.

From COVID Vaccines to Ocean Waves

Jana's path to becoming a tech entrepreneur was anything but conventional. A researcher at heart, she specialised in oceanography and deep learning, a field she once applied to the development of the COVID vaccine.

"I never thought I would be an entrepreneur," she admitted to us. But a passion for the environment and a realisation that oceanography was an "untapped sector of research for having this cutting edge tech" led her to found New Wave.

Her mission is to bring a new level of understanding to the complex physics of our oceans. She describes deep learning with a beautiful analogy: trying to find the one perfect angle in a funhouse maze of mirrors to see your reflection clearly. It's a world of immense complexity, with millions of parameters and layers.

Yet, the AI she builds is a far cry from the large language models that dominate the headlines.

"It would almost be a shame to class this as an LLM model," she explained. "We don't burn loads of compute power… we're not making up any data. Everything's data-driven and physics-informed."

The Right Tool for the Right Job

This distinction gets to a core theme of our conversation: the misperception of what AI is and what it can do. We feel there is an obsession with generative AI, the kind that can write a poem or create an image, while the equally revolutionary work of applying AI to solve specific, "unglamorous" real-world problems often goes unnoticed. Jana's work is a prime example.

Her models can perform a task in 12 seconds that would take a traditional 256-core supercomputer 10 hours to complete. This isn't about replacing human intelligence with an artificial one; it's about augmenting it. New Wave's AI acts as a "communication tool" between the engineers at their desks and the captains on the vessels.

It translates the hard-won intuition of those who have spent their lives on the water into data that can inform long-term planning. Initially, she faced resistance from these seasoned professionals, a common challenge when introducing new technology into established industries. But by working closely with them and building an AI that reflected their workflow and addressed their daily stresses, she won them over.

The technology succeeded because it was designed with a deep empathy for the people who would use it.

The Staggering Cost of Inefficiency

The offshore wind industry is plagued by delays, with the average wind farm taking four to eight years longer to build than planned. These delays have a direct, and often astronomical, financial impact.

Jana shared the startling example of a wind turbine blade repair. If addressed within a few months during the winter, the cost is around £20,000 to £50,000.

However, if the repair is delayed until the summer, a common occurrence due to long consultancy and planning cycles, the cost escalates to between half a million and a million pounds as the damage spreads. This is where the power of a responsive, physics-informed AI becomes undeniable.

By turning around reports in a day or two, a process that takes traditional consultancies six weeks, New Wave is enabling a proactive approach to maintenance that can save millions. It's a powerful demonstration of how the right technology, applied to the right problem, can create immense value.

The fragility of our offshore infrastructure, particularly the subsea cables that are the lifeblood of our digital world, further underscores the importance of this work:

• Each kilometre of cable costs approximately £20,000 to insure

• Around 200 accidental cable breakages from boats occur annually

• Installation mishandling and changing wave conditions compound the problem

• Cables are often damaged during transport from manufacturing in East Asia

The need for better forecasting and security is not just urgent; it is existential for the offshore energy sector.

Be Weird, Be Different

Jana's journey is not just a story about technology; it's a story about the courage to think differently. Her advice to young professionals who want to make a difference is simple: "Just be weird, be different."

She has seen how corporate environments can stifle individuality, but she believes that the people who ultimately succeed are those who "stick their neck out and be bold."

As a hands-on CEO, deeply involved in the technical direction of her company, she embodies this philosophy. It's a path that comes with immense challenges, particularly when it comes to hiring people who can operate at the cutting edge of research within the high-pressure environment of a startup. But it is this passion and unwavering belief in her mission that drives the company forward.

A Glimpse into the Future

Our conversation with Jana Stella was a fascinating exploration of a world that is largely invisible but utterly essential to our modern lives. We delved into so many other topics, from her belief that AI could be an enabler for Universal Basic Income (UBI), to the philosophical debate on whether technology will ultimately create a more equitable society or a greater divide.

She also shared her long-term dream: to combine her AI expertise with her co-founder's background in quantum computing to one day map the entire ocean. Her vision extends beyond mere technical achievement. She spoke passionately about technologies like M-Pesa in Kenya, which enables people in remote areas to save and store money through their mobile phones, fundamentally changing access to financial services.

This is the kind of socially significant work that drives her, whether in oceanography or elsewhere. It's a reminder that the most powerful applications of technology are those that solve real human problems, often in unglamorous ways.

We invite you to listen to the full episode of the Project Flux podcast to hear the full depth of Jana's insights.

It is a conversation that will give you a newfound appreciation for the complexity of our oceans and the remarkable potential of AI when it is guided by a clear purpose and a deep understanding of the human element. It is a story of how being a little bit weird can change the world.

All content reflects our personal views and is not intended as professional advice or to represent any organisation.

Listen to the full podcast episode with Jana Stella on the Project Flux website.