3 ways we're innovating thanks to tech
What does augmented reality, machine learning and future-predicting algorithms have in common? They’re all one of the many ways technology helps Equinor to innovate.
The Software Innovation departement is bound by name to innovate and come up with some bright new ideas but it’s more than just a fancy title. We try to live up to the expectations in the ways we work within Equinor IT and the end results speak for themselves.
Thanks to our dedicated and talented software developers we're able to be a frontrunner in using a variety of state of the art technology. IT is more than just changing passwords, server maintenance and hooking up computer screens. Which is why we've rounded up three examples to showcase how we’re innovating through tech - all packaged up nicely so you can get a quick and easy overview:
1. Predicting the future with machine learning
Move over tarot cards and psychics - there’s a new future-predicting master in town. Thanks to machine learning, we’re well on our way to predicting faults on our wind turbines - before they happen. Our wind farms and turbines are equipped with more than 80,000 sensors and we’ve uploaded all that data into the cloud and fed it into a machine learning network.
“We’ve trained the model using historical data. When it learns the patterns that lead to a failure, we can use this knowledge to get predictions in real time. This means we’ll be feeding it with the same data from the same sensors but doing it as they happen.”
Thomas Thoresen, Software Developer.
In short, the network is looking at historic data and figuring out what eventually led to a failure - and giving us an alert when it thinks history is bound to repeat itself.
Click the button below to read more about how our dedicated software developers pulled it off.
2. A digital clone of the real world
Whether it’s a massive offshore oil rig, large turbines for our wind farms or a teeny-tiny valve - we're busy at work cloning it. This enables our operators to put on a Microsoft Hololens kit and view the same teeny-tiny valve or massive oil rig in the comfort of an office - or we can use the kit to track a pipe from its starting point and follow it around while offshore.
It might not seem like a big deal but it can save huge amounts of work and makes everyday life easier for our operators. But in order for our developers to know what life is really like offshore they have to experience it for themselves.
“Even though we always take the weather and other conditions into account, it’s something else entirely to experience it yourself. We can always improve in terms of understanding the situations our users face everyday.”
Harald Wesenberg, Software Developer.
Click the button below to see what it looks like when developers meet the offshore world at Johan Sverdrup!
3. Eyes in space
Sometimes, you need to get a higher vantage point to get an overview of the situation. And that's exactly what we're doing when we're trying to figure out which way our offshore wind turbines are facing. We’re now downloading satellite images, processing them using several algorithms and then trying to figure out which way our wind turbines are facing.
“It’s all one algorithm after another, with each problem having its own library and ways of doing it.”
Hallgeir Holien, Software Developer.
Their direction matters because they produce less if they're not facing in the right direction. Just like a skier can go faster downhill by changing his positioning. After all, who doesn't love space stuff?
Click the button below to read the full story and learn how it all came to be.
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