In the high-stakes world of energy production, where precision and efficiency are paramount, one company is soaring to new heights using the cloud-based power of Shadow PC. Poweend, a pioneering French company created 3 years ago, specializes in compact wind turbines, a game-changing alternative where traditional wind farms can't be established. Their innovative designs, featuring 50-meter masts with 60-meter rotors and 30-meter blades, are disrupting the renewable energy sector. However, the intensive design work required to achieve their ambitious goals was not without its challenges.
When several designers began working concurrently on the complex turbine models using SolidWorks*, they found their hardware capabilities stretched to the limit. The more elements they grouped, the more they bumped against their machines' performance ceiling. "We then turned to portable work solutions, especially to facilitate remote work. But we quickly faced many problems: slow speeds, issues with opening overly large files... This had a problematic impact on our productivity," explains Jean-Charles Vandenelsken, a Quality and Process Engineer at Poweend.
Poweend employees needed a solution that wouldn't lock them into a fixed, high-cost workstation, yet offered the assurance of uninterrupted work - and they found it in our Shadow PC Lightning configuration. "Shadow PC provided us with hardware resources that have significantly more power than our portable workstations, and most importantly, they are accessible remotely. This allows us to maintain remote work while increasing productivity," added Vandenelsken.
A trial with a test machine was enough to demonstrate Shadow PC's substantial advantage. "We started by installing the Solidworks software, and all three users who benefited from it were won over," explains Vandenelsken. The results were remarkable: all the designers observed a significant leap forward in terms of latency. What’s more, Shadow PC's accessibility from any device, without investing in dedicated hardware, offered much-needed flexibility. "Given our current use of our devices and the complexity of our 3D projects, without Shadow PC it would actually be impossible even to open our files on a standard PC.”
After the design stage, Shadow's transformative impact was also experienced by Poweend’s development division. Their work, which involved overlaying multiple maps to identify potential wind farm sites, required an immense amount of RAM, but not necessarily high-end graphics power. The Rendering option offered by Shadow PC was ideal for this task. With Shadow PC, they went from being able to load only map sections to being able to handle complete maps, dramatically streamlining their site selection process.
The adaptability of Shadow PC extends to the team's hardware as well, enabling them to work seamlessly from laptops at home. With the added convenience of local printer support, they can print documents without having to reconfigure their setups. "Shadow PC will also allow us to use external resources such as consultants, providing them with machines capable of supporting high power demands without having to invest in high-cost portable stations," concludes Vandenelsken.
As Poweend moves towards producing its first prototype by 2024, Shadow PC remains a trusted partner. With a focus on end-to-end service, from design and production to maintenance and energy resale, Poweend continues to harness Shadow PC's exceptional computing power and anywhere-accessibility, pushing the boundaries of renewable energy solutions and a sustainable future.
*Computer-aided design (CAD) software mainly used to create 2D and 3D models and designs for mechanical parts