Duke Energy, after an extensive field trial, has standardized its helicopter fleet on the GPMS Foresight Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS).

“We are very pleased to see an operator like Duke embracing our predictive HUMS product. Throughout 2018, their operational team logged over 500 hours on a rotorcraft equipped with Foresight. Their decision to outfit the remainder of their fleet, including new purchases, is a testament to the value we are bringing for operators,” said GPMS CEO Eric Bechhoefer.

“From the start, we were excited about GPMS’s Foresight HUMS as a next-generation offering. We were really struck with the impact this tool had on our fleet. Having experienced Foresight, our maintenance techs have become real advocates for the system,” said Ron Hughes, Manager of Aviation Maintenance, Duke Energy.

Consisting of onboard sensors and cloud-based software, Foresight provides rotorcraft operations teams with a remote monitoring solution to track component and engine health, capture exceedances, provide flight data monitoring and enable automated, optimized rotor track & balance.

Designed with distributed bus architecture and built on the Amazon Web Services IoT cloud, the system is lightweight, provides rapid data acquisition, and is priced to fit the underserved light rotorcraft market. Most important, Foresight brings Predictive Maintenance capability to the HUMS category with a prognostic system that displays Remaining Useful Life on all monitored components.

During its 9 month trial, the Foresight system contributed to flight operations at Duke Energy in a number of key ways:

Issue Detection: Foresight’s easy to read component-level Condition Indicators alerted maintainers of oil contamination in the main rotor gearbox.

Remote Diagnostics: Foresight’s anywhere-access cloud architecture enabled maintainers to confirm engine health remotely, saving a costly, time-consuming trip.

Predictive Maintenance: Foresight’s advanced sensors picked up on a faulty #5 power turbine bearing, enabling the team to track the issue and — when it starts to propagate — perform repairs before it impacts uptime.

Automated RTB: Foresight’s onboard Rotor Track and Balance capability reduced the maintenance flights typically required for an out of an annual adjustment by 75%.

“I just like to know there’s something out there that does what they say it will,” said Troy Snow, Senior Aircraft Technician at Duke Energy.