Eologix Since the EIC Accelerator: Blade Sensors and a Merger

eologix sensor technology, founded in Graz in 2014, makes thin, solar-powered wireless sensors that are glued onto the outer surface of wind turbine blades to detect ice. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 3 April 2019 it won an EU grant of €1,133,877.50 for EOLOGIX, a €1,619,825 project to turn that ice sensor into a single on-blade system that would also detect blade cracks and measure pitch angle errors, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of April 2019 winners spells the company "ECOLOGIX SENSOR TECHNOLOGY GMBH" and gives the website as www.ecologix.com; the company's own name and domain are eologix. The list names no other partner for the project.

Seven years on, the company is active and larger. It raised €6 million in September 2022, merged with Australia's Ping Services in May 2023, trades as EOLOGIX-PING, and in July 2026 announced its largest US contract, for nearly 300 turbines, according to Windtech International and North American Clean Energy. Of the three features the EU project bundled into one blade sensor, two are on sale today. The third, crack detection, is now sold as acoustic monitoring, the technology Ping brought into the merger.

Where the Company Stands Now

The Austrian company register shows eologix as a live company that filed its accounts for 2024 in August 2025 and for 2025 in May 2026, and that converted from a GmbH into a FlexCo, Austria's new flexible capital company, in April 2025, according to the register extract at evi.gv.at and North Data. Its registered share capital stands at €180,544.54. The filed accounts are abbreviated small-company balance sheets; their contents, including any revenue or staff figures, are not freely available and could not be checked for this article.

The merger with Ping Services Pty Ltd of Adelaide was announced on 23 May 2023, according to Windtech International and Green Tech Valley. Both companies kept their legal entities: the group's website is signed "eologix sensor technology flexco & Ping Services Pty Ltd" (EOLOGIX-PING). How the shares were combined has not been published. The data platform CB Insights records the deal as an acquisition of eologix by "eologix-ping" (CB Insights), while the Austrian register shows eologix as an operating company with eight corporate shareholders as of May 2024, so this article treats the funded company as active rather than acquired.

The company's scale is reported inconsistently. A Stone & Chalk profile of Ping's co-founder in May 2026 put the installed base at "over 2,000 turbines" in more than 25 countries (Stone & Chalk); the company's US contract announcement two months later cited "more than 3,000 turbines equipped worldwide" (North American Clean Energy). Neither figure separates the on-blade sensors that the EU funded from Ping's tower-mounted acoustic monitors. The US customer was not named.

The Technology: Sensing on the Blade Surface

Common alternatives infer ice indirectly, for example from vibration measured in the nacelle, the method eologix benchmarks itself against, or rely on periodic visual inspections of the blades. eologix glues flexible wireless sensors directly onto the blade surface. Each sensor harvests light through a small solar cell, measures capacitively whether ice is building up, and radios its readings to a base station in the nacelle. The company says its system distinguishes rime from glaze ice and measures temperature to within 0.25°C, and that it needs no data from the turbine maker, so it can be retrofitted to any turbine (EOLOGIX-PING technology page). Michael Moser, a former researcher at Graz University of Technology, wrote his doctoral thesis on capacitive icing detection, according to the company's team page.

The EIC project was to add accelerometers to the same sensor so that, alongside ice, it could detect cracks and measure pitch misalignment, the case where one blade sits at a slightly different angle from the others and costs output and adds fatigue. The company's Phase 1 feasibility study, funded with €50,000 from November 2018 to February 2019 under the name eolACC, described the plan as "wireless accelerometers to detect damage to blades before they fail" (CORDIS, eolACC).

The pitch feature reached the market as eologix:align, now :ALIGN. In a case study on a Nordex N100 turbine in Germany, the company compared its readings with a ground-based laser survey and reported that both found no relative blade angle error, with deviations within ± 0.6 degrees (North American Clean Energy). That is the company's own test, not an independent one. In a separate 2025 to 2026 winter comparison on an Enercon E115 in Germany, the company reported 16 icing events and 5 days, 1 hour and 46 minutes of ice time against 80 events and 10 days, 3 hours and 54 minutes for a vibration-based detector on the same turbine, a 51% reduction (EOLOGIX-PING case study). Its website also quotes a 2021 Meteotest study for the VGB Research Foundation that compared four ice detection systems on one turbine; that study was not available to check.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The EOLOGIX grant agreement was signed on 28 August 2019 and the project ran on schedule from 1 September 2019 to 31 August 2021. At application, eologix said it had "over 50 customers which have purchased over 200" ice detection systems, named Enercon, E.ON, Tecnocentre éolien, EVN and Verbund as interested customers, and promised market entry in France, Belgium and the DACH region in 2021, the rest of Europe and North America in 2022 and Asia in 2023. It projected revenues of "almost €12M per year to 2024" and 6 new jobs (CORDIS).

The final report says firmware was written for the sensor, receiver and base station, AI algorithms were implemented and tested, beta systems were installed with partners, the platform was certified as a condition monitoring system, a customer dashboard was built, and "first systems are sold to end customers". It names eologix:align as the first online pitch misalignment monitor that works without turbine data (CORDIS report). It does not name a certifier, customers or sales figures for the new features, and gives no result for on-blade crack detection.

1. Pitch angle monitoring on the bladeDeliveredSold as :ALIGN; Nordex N100 case study.
2. Ice detection in the same platformDeliveredIce products on sale; DNV certified, per its investor.
3. Crack detection with on-blade accelerometersPartlyCrack detection is sold, but as acoustic monitoring.
4. Condition monitoring certificationUnverifiedClaimed in the final report; certifier not named.
5. North America entry by 2022DeliveredUS customers, nearly 300 turbines added in 2026.
6. About €12M revenue a year by 2024Not shownNo revenue figure published by the company or the register.

The crack detection gap matters because it was the headline of the project. Today the group sells blade damage detection as :SURFACE HEALTH, an acoustic sensor at the base of the tower that listens to the airflow over damaged blades, and as :STRUCTURAL HEALTH, which the company describes as using "acoustic sensors for crack detection and propagation" in the blade root (EOLOGIX-PING, blade damage; technology FAQ). The company's technology page describes its on-blade system as one "for early icing detection and temperature measurement". The single on-blade sensor for crack, pitch and ice that the project promised is not offered as such. The group's company history says the "Horizon 2020 project drove EOLOGIX forward from ice detection to comprehensive condition monitoring of wind turbines" (EOLOGIX-PING, about), which is accurate for the product range, though much of that range came with Ping.

The Money

Phoenix Contact's venture fund has been a shareholder since 2016, according to North Data, and was named in the CORDIS application as a dissemination partner. In September 2022, a year after the EU project ended, Emerald Technology Ventures led a €6 million round with Nabtesco Ventures, Orlen VC and Phoenix Contact Innovation Ventures, according to Windtech International and Deutsche Startups. In May 2024 the merged group announced a further strategic round, again led by Emerald with Nabtesco and Phoenix Contact, plus new investors Helen Ventures, Beraunberri and VERBUND X; the amount was not disclosed (Emerald Technology Ventures; Windtech International). Verbund, listed in 2019 as an interested customer, now has a venture arm on the shareholder list, and a Verbund ice control project appears among the company's case studies.

The award was grant only: no EIC equity was part of it, and no source found for this article reports an EIC Fund investment. eologix has also taken part in three EU research consortia since the award: SYMPHONY on printed energy harvesting (€590,945 to eologix, 2020 to 2024), Nanowings on anti-icing coatings for blades with Enel as test partner (€367,233.75, 2023 to April 2026) and MULTIMOLD on in-mould electronics (€275,208.19, 2024 to 2027), according to CORDIS (SYMPHONY, Nanowings, MULTIMOLD). North Data also lists seven Austrian state aid items in 2021 totalling €139,497, including COVID-19 liquidity support.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU's European Wind Power Action Plan of October 2023 set out to keep a competitive wind supply chain in Europe as Chinese turbine makers gained share, as summarised by Luther. Monitoring tools that keep installed turbines running longer and restart them sooner after icing serve that goal without new hardware on the grid side, and the 2019 application named European utilities such as Verbund, EVN and E.ON among interested customers. The Ping merger added a technology base and team in Australia, while the Austrian company's legal seat, register filings and EU projects remain in Graz.

The Verdict

eologix and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.