Atharra turned one at the start of April. Twelve months ago, three of us left long-term roles at a large European wind operator and set up a consultancy in Edinburgh with a fairly specific conviction: that the onshore wind industry needed access to senior, operator-side engineering and commercial expertise without having to hire it full-time or buy it from a large consultancy that would send juniors to do the work.
That conviction was based on years of watching the same problems recur across different portfolios, and a growing sense that the market was moving in a direction that would make those problems harder to ignore. What we did not know, at the time, was how quickly the work would come.
We have not done any proactive business development. No cold outreach, no marketing campaigns, no conference stands. Every piece of work in our first year came to us through reputation, referral, or existing relationships. We worked with seven different valued customers across the full breadth of our services, from life extension studies and performance optimisation to operational strategy, reliability support, and technical due diligence. We closed the year with a strong order book, a healthy pipeline, and a fourth experienced team member that joined us in April 2026.
We mention this not to boast, but because what it tells us about the state of the market is more interesting than what it says about us.
What the first year told us about the market
The single strongest signal from our first twelve months is that the demands on wind asset operators are growing faster than most organisations can reasonably adapt to. The shift away from full-scope OEM service agreements is well understood as a trend, but the practical consequences of that shift are still emerging.
Under a full-scope contract, the operator could manage the asset at arm's length. The OEM carried the engineering risk, made the component decisions, and absorbed the cost of getting it wrong. When that contract ends or is replaced with something less comprehensive, the operator inherits responsibility for every engineering judgement that used to sit with someone else. That is a significant change, and it requires capability that takes time to develop internally, regardless of how well-resourced the organisation is.
We saw this across multiple engagements in different forms. Operators navigating the transition to reduced-scope contracts and needing structured support to manage the new responsibilities that come with it. Owners looking to extend the life of their assets and needing the analytical work to determine whether that was safe and commercially justified. Portfolios where the opportunity to improve energy production was clear but the engineering programme to capture it had not yet been built. In each case, the underlying theme was consistent: the market is asking more of operators than it did five years ago, and the need for experienced, independent engineering support is growing as a result.
The other theme that came through strongly was the growing importance of life extension. Many European wind farms are now well into their second decade, and the question of what happens beyond the original design life is no longer theoretical. Owners are having to make real decisions about whether to extend, repower, or exit, and those decisions depend on engineering evidence that, in many cases, has not yet been developed. The publication of IEC 61400-28 has given the industry a helpful framework, but the standard does not do the work for you. It still requires experienced engineers to gather the right data, run the right analysis, and translate the results into something an investment committee can act on.
What surprised us
A couple of things stood out that we had not fully anticipated.
The first was the breadth of what we were asked to do. We expected the demand to be spread across our core service areas, and it was, but the nature of the engagements was broader than we had anticipated. Operators were not just looking for someone to carry out a specific technical study. They were looking for a partner who could sit across the technical and commercial boundary and help them make better decisions about how they run their assets. The combination of deep engineering expertise and genuine commercial context turned out to be rarer in the market than we had assumed, and the demand for it was stronger than we expected.
The second was how much untapped opportunity exists in performance improvement. Most portfolios contain genuine potential to increase energy production, reduce losses, and lower operating costs. But turning those opportunities into delivered results requires a disciplined programme with clear decision gates, proper engineering analysis, and controlled implementation. What we found, across several engagements, was that the opportunities had been identified but the structured delivery programme to capture them had not yet been developed. The potential is real. The delivery framework is what unlocks it.
Where we see the industry heading
Looking ahead, several trends stand out to us as defining the next few years in wind energy.
The transition away from full-scope OEM contracts will continue to accelerate. For operators, this means building or accessing the engineering capability to manage their own technical risk. For the advisory market, it means a growing need for genuinely experienced, independent support that is not tied to a product, a software platform, or a service contract.
Life extension will move from a niche concern to a mainstream operational requirement. The number of European turbines approaching or exceeding their original design life is increasing every year, and the planning and grid constraints that make repowering difficult are not going away. Even where the long-term intention is to repower, a strong asset-specific late-life management strategy is essential to maximise the remaining value from existing assets while managing costs and risk through the transition period. Operators who invest early in understanding their asset condition and remaining useful life will have more options and better commercial outcomes than those who defer the question until it becomes urgent.
Technology partnerships will become more important. Aerodynamic upgrades, control system optimisation, and retrofit condition monitoring all offer meaningful performance gains, but only when selected, delivered, and validated properly. The gap between what a technology provider promises and what an operator actually achieves in the field is often significant, and closing that gap requires operator-side engineering oversight throughout the process. We expect this area to grow substantially.
Offshore wind will begin to face the same challenges that onshore has been grappling with for a decade. The early offshore assets are now reaching mid-life, and the operational complexity of maintaining turbines in a marine environment amplifies every reliability and life extension challenge that onshore operators know well. The lessons are transferable, but the window to apply them is shorter and the cost of getting it wrong is higher.
And running through all of this is a talent challenge. The number of engineers with deep, practical experience in wind turbine reliability, performance, and life extension is small relative to the growing demand. That is unlikely to change quickly, and it has implications for how operators access specialist capability. Building large internal teams is not realistic for most portfolios. The alternative is long-term relationships with smaller, senior-led firms that can provide continuity and depth without the overhead.
Where we are going next
We started as three and a clear focus on onshore wind. As we enter year two, we are growing. Our first employee beyond the founding team joined in April, bringing additional mechanical engineering depth to our life extension and asset integrity work. We expect to add further capability over the coming year as the demand warrants it.
Our service offering is expanding too. We are deepening our technology partnerships, working with specialist providers of aerodynamic upgrades and control system optimisation to offer operators a complete, delivery-managed route to performance improvement. We are building our offshore wind advisory capability, drawing on the operational and engineering principles that have underpinned our onshore work. And we are continuing to develop our subscription-based reliability engineering model, which gives operators ongoing access to senior engineering support without the cost or recruitment challenge of building it in-house.
The ambition has not changed since day one: to be the firm that operators turn to when the engineering and commercial decisions really matter. We are not trying to be the biggest consultancy in the wind sector. We are trying to be the one that owners and investors trust most when they need experienced, independent judgement on the assets that underpin their returns.
Looking back, looking forward
A year ago, we backed ourselves to build something the market needed. The past twelve months have confirmed that the need is real and growing. We are grateful to every client who trusted a new business with work that mattered to them, and to the partners and colleagues who supported us along the way.
If any of the themes in this piece resonate with challenges you are facing in your own portfolio, we would welcome the conversation.
