The challenge
With 15,000 employees in over 100 countries, Det Norske Veritas (DNV) is the world’s largest classification society. They have safeguarded life, property, and the environment for over 160 years by solving complex, technical challenges and providing third-party assurance for nearly 100,000 clients across the maritime, oil and gas, renewable
energy, electrification, food and beverage, and healthcare sectors.
energy, electrification, food and beverage, and healthcare sectors.
DNV gained an early foothold in wind power in the 1970s. Today, there are over 33,000 wind turbines in Europe that are 15 years or older; typically, they have a lifespan of 20-30 years. Decommissioning a wind farm can cost over €100 million.
Now, owner-operators face a historical challenge as multitudes of wind turbines reach their end of life, with no common approach to decommissioning at a global scale - leading to a significant amount of materials, time, and money wasted. Together with Reodor, DNV saw the need for a digital service to ease both the wind farm planning and decommissioning processes, ensuring the cost-effective and sustainable disposal of these turbines.
The approach
The idea for ReWind emerged from an internal innovation competition in DNV, and soon DNV’s internal team were delivering small consulting projects complemented by PDF reports with the material composition of the turbines, calculation of recyclability, cost analysis, recommended process, and local service providers. The reports were well-received; however, their production involved too much manual work and was not scalable. Thousands of companies needed help, but consulting and reports alone could not create the impact needed at a global scale.
This was the starting point for Reodor’s work with DNV. Our shared vision was to create a scalable service and corporate venture to help wind farm owner-operators decommission their wind farms in a more cost-efficient and sustainable way. We moved fast in the first seven months of our collaboration, going from the static report to a digital service with paid pilot customers and a functioning MVP. We did this by laying a solid product vision and strategy, designing and prototyping in quick iterations, performing ongoing customer research and concept testing, and creating the sales pitch and go-to-market plan.
The ultimate validation of our new service was successfully recruiting seven paid pilot customers, including Ørsted and Energia - some of the biggest names in the renewables industry. We designed the pilot program to maximise learnings and iterations at each stage, gathering both quantitative and qualitative data at regular milestones to improve the service. Throughout the pilot and beyond, we went through iterative cycles of build-measure-learn together with the core ReWind team. In this phase Reodor contributed with UX/UI design and support within product management, business model validation and commercial development.
Major key success factors for this project were autonomy, speed, and embracing an experimental, lean way of working. DNV’s unfair advantages, including existing customer relationships and the material breakdown of specific turbine models, combined with Reodor’s expertise in iterative service development, enabled us to move quickly to bring the new service to market.
The results
Reodor is extremely proud of our 18 month long collaboration with DNV on ReWind to help solve this historic challenge. At the conclusion of Year 2, ReWind continues to progress on its spinout journey as an independent venture with autonomy outside of the DNV “mother ship.” The digital service is on track to scale to 20 paid customers, a significant expansion beyond the initial pilot phase.
ReWind’s current focus is to continue to build out the team to ensure ongoing autonomy and continued customer-centricity, with a focus on customer success and product development. In addition, the ReWind team is continuously exploring product/market fit, especially around new revenue models that better align to user needs, specifically around non-recurring needs for one-off projects.
“Reodor brought a new lease of life to ReWind at a critical time in our venture’s journey. The expertise that they bring in service design, UX, and go-to-market strategy, combined with inspiration to think outside the box and see the full market potential, helped ReWind to successfully launch our first digital product to an initial group of pilot customers.”
Matthew Geraghty ReWind Venture Lead, DNV
