Autodesk Customer Success - Gaoh Energy

Gaoh Energy, an ambitious start-up focused on a range of renewable energy sectors, is using Digital Prototyping software from Autodesk, Inc., to help deliver innovative solutions into the onshore and offshore wind markets and the tidal energy sector.

Gaoh Energy joined the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program, which provides software for emerging clean tech companies in North America, Europe, Japan and Singapore, on the recommendation of Autodesk reseller, Micro Concepts, which provides its IT support. Since joining the program, in November 2010, the company has been using AutoCAD and increasingly making use of the Autodesk Product Design Suite, including Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Showcase. It uses the Autodesk software in particular to provide design and engineering solutions to clients developing wind farms and demonstration sites.

The ability to carry out 3D modelling using the Product Design Suite and Autodesk Inventor, in particular, has been a major benefit,” says Phil Ellis, senior planner, Gaoh Energy. “Using it means we can take more work in-house which we would otherwise have had to outsource to engineers or fabrication companies.”

Gaoh has also used the 3D visualisation capabilities of Autodesk Showcase extensively, to communicate design intent effectively to customers and prospects. It projects designs, visualised in Showcase, onto interactive whiteboards, helping to achieve consensus on the way in which designs should be taken forward in projects.

“We have had excellent feedback on Showcase from all of our design users at Gaoh Energy,” adds Ellis. “They report that it has enhanced the decision-making process and added greatly to customer satisfaction.”

In addition to developing and installing its own renewable energy sites, Gaoh Energy also uses the Autodesk software solutions to provide design and engineering consultancy to clients across the renewable energy sectors.

“We have achieved extensive benefits from being part of the Autodesk Clean Tech Partner Program,” continues Ellis. “It is a great scheme for start-ups as it provides them with an excellent way to get up and running with design without needing to make a major investment in design software upfront.

“We have plans to double the size of the business in line with the dynamic growth in the sector and being part of the Clean Tech Partner Program should help us to achieve this,” he says.

Erwin Burth, business development manager for Clean Tech at Autodesk, says, “one of the great benefits of the Clean Tech Partner Program for early stage clean technology companies like Gaoh Energy is that it allows them to accelerate the development of solutions for pressing environmental challenges without being hampered from doing so by the need to make significant upfront capital investment in design software.”

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