RTDT: The Venture Leader Mobile optimising wind turbine fleet operation through unique structural health insights

16.02.2024 10:00, Rita Longobardi

Meet Imad Abdallah, CEO of RTDT. By integrating sensors and data analytics tools, the ICT startup automates the continuous assessment of wind turbines' structural reserves to identify opportunities to maximize green energy production using physics-driven deep artificial intelligence models.

Name: Imad Abdallah
Location: Basel, Switzerland
Nationality: Canada and Switzerland
Graduated from: Technical University of Denmark and ETH Zurich
Job title: CEO and Co-founder
Number of employees: 5
Money raised: Closing our pre-series round within a few weeks


 

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Can you tell us who your product or solution helps, and how?
RTDT offers the Aerosense platform for structural health monitoring & diagnostics, and power performance optimization for wind turbines. RTDT's product offering includes:

• Performance Optimization: Opportunities to maximise the energy output of wind turbines, leading to increased energy output.
• Lifetime Extension: Structural health monitoring helps identify potential issues early on, enabling proactive action to reduce downtime due to repairs and extend the lifespan of turbines.
• Risk-Based Insurance Pricing: this can result in lower insurance costs and increased competitiveness in the energy market.

What market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup in that market?
RTDT addresses the market problem of wind farm owners lacking accurate and timely information on wind turbines' structural health. This leads to suboptimal O&M strategies, higher costs, lower energy output, and safety hazards. Manual inspections are time-consuming and costly, often neglecting overall integrity. The lack of site-specific insights raises insurance costs for small operators. RTDT's solution offers automated, continuous structural health monitoring using sensors and analytics for real-time insights. This optimises O&M strategies, energy output, lifespan, and insurance costs.

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
I have worked in the wind industry for 20 years, designing and testing wind turbines. I have firsthand experience with the problems and inefficiencies plaguing wind turbines from design to operation. RTDT is a spin-off from ETH Zurich based on a 5-year ERC-funded research project.

What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how do you think it will help you achieve your vision?

1. Promote Aerosense to investors and experts and hear their tech and business feedback.
2. Develop strategies to push Aerosense into other industry verticals, beyond wind energy, such as civil infrastructure, shipping/sailing, etc.
3. Get at least two follow-ups from investors and potential customers.

What are your team’s key achievements to date?
We have now implemented a solid technological stack to deploy into production a large amount of structural health monitoring algorithms at lightning speed. We are deploying our tech on 50 wind turbines in Switzerland, Germany, Greece, India, and Brazil.

Is there a key principle or value that guides you as you build your company?

• Build technology that makes our world a better and more predictable place for me, my kids, my family, and society at large.
• Go big or go home: I would rather try to do the hard things (and maybe fail), rather than settle for the easier options.

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder?
The most important lesson I learned as a founder is to build an incredible amount of patience and resilience. We are building what we think is an awesome tech and product until we stand in front of our customers who give us a dose of reality. Iterating and repeating this process repeatedly takes an incredible amount of patience and resilience.

What is your favourite productivity hack or tool and why?
I recently realized that the key to my productivity is daydreaming on long walks, which leads to many incredible ideas. I follow this up with handwritten notes of all the ideas and solutions that brewed in my head. I feel I am able to solve tons of issues this way.

What was your dream job when you were a child?
My dream job as a child was to become an archaeologist. I love history, I love the outdoors, and I love to dig in the dirt to discover the unexpected!

Do you recommend a podcast you want to share with us?
I hardly ever listen to podcasts, I prefer to read Cyberpunk science fiction books instead. Furthermore, I follow several YouTube channels about Triathlon, tennis, and trail running.