Wind Energy Update

Wind Energy Operations and Maintenance Summit attracts market leaders

The Wind Energy Operations and maintenance summit is rapidly selling out and has attracted over 100 attendees from the likes of Mitsubishi Power Systems, BP Alternaitive Energy, Siemens Wind Energy, Allianz Specialist Investments, GE Wind Energy from across the globe. It's being held in London on 11-12 November. If you haven't booked yet make sure you don't miss out! Click here to visit the website and secure your place now.

Wind Energy Update launches Wind Energy Performance Optimisation Summit 2009

Wind Energy Update are proud to launch the Wind Energy Performance Optimisation Summit 2009. The event will be held in February 2009 and will show senior level wind executives how to minimise cost to maximise output and wind farm ROI. As usual, we have a speaker line up that's second-to-none and are very excited about the event! Visit the website now for further information, and benefit from our Super Early Bird ticket prices.

Exclusive Interview with Peter Clive, Technical Development Officer, SGURR Energy Ltd: Understanding the utility of SCADA data in optimising wind farms performance

The data routinely acquired and stored by SCADA systems represents a vast amount of valuable information about the performance of wind turbines.

The information that can be extracted from this data is potentially of great benefit in terms of enabling accurate revenue variance attribution, well informed O&M strategies and infrastructure configuration, pro-active and pre-emptive intervention to alleviate anomalous performance, and the tuning of operational parameters to maximise revenues.

However, this information has historically been widely neglected because of the resource necessary to extract it from the data, according to Peter Clive, technical development officer, SGURR Energy Ltd .

"It has often been considered worthwhile to analyse the data only once something has already gone wrong with a turbine. However, analysis that have hitherto been conducted in a reactive, post hoc manner to diagnose faults or to progress post investment appraisals are now being automated, radically reducing the resource necessary to conduct them, and new tools have been developed which further enable rapid performance assessment and enhance its value. Rapid performance assessment enables routine performance assessment from which all the benefits of a more pro-active approach can be derived," said Clive, who is scheduled to speak during Wind Energy Operations & Maintenance Summit 2008, scheduled to take place in London on 11-12 November this year .

In a conversation with windenergyupdate.com , Clive shared that o ne current trend is the move towards data aggregation among owners, operators and network management of multiple wind farms: the data from multiple disparate SCADA systems installed at multiple wind farms is put into a common format for centralised asset control in a "SCADA on top of SCADA" setup.

This enables more efficient review of the performance of portfolios of wind farms and is also used in some instances to assist forecasting.

The full benefits of this trend have not been realised as in general the full potential for performance assessment is not being exploited.

Clive added that another interesting trend is the ongoing investigation of exactly how much information can be extracted from routine SCADA data.

"For example, an active topic of research that is informing our approach to performance assessment is the extent to which the stresses the machine is subject to, arising from, for example, turbulence, wind shear and veer, and flow inclination, can be discerned using standard performance assessment tools. This field is one of the most rapidly progressing fields in a rapidly developing industry and SgurrEnergy engages in continuous innovation to remain at the cutting edge delivering the maximum achievable benefit to its clients," said Clive.

"One possible benefit of third party performance assessment in the future is the possibility it raises for the continuation of the trend towards data aggregation such that performance assessment in terms of turbine inter-comparison is not conducted relative only to other turbines within the same individual wind farm or even within a single portfolio but rather extended to encompass entire fleets. In this way, the performance of an individual turbine can be routinely compared to the performance of every other turbine of the same make and model to derive the maximum benefit," he said.

"The development of offshore wind farms poses its own unique set of O&M problems, and the ability to conduct routine performance assessment is of particular benefit in this context, where it may ultimately be viewed as a sine qua non ."

SCADA systems, which implement Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition, are operational (rather than analysis) tools.

"In general, the most valuable analysis of turbine performance are not implemented by the SCADA system per se but by the tools with which the system may be augmented for the purposes of performance monitoring and assessment and which utilise for that purpose the data routinely acquired by the SCADA system," said Clive.

Citing an example, Clive said some limited turbine inter-comparison and performance trending is sometimes performed by reporting modules of SCADA systems but the most sophisticated analysis delivering the greatest benefit are beyond the scope of essential supervisory control and data acquisition implemented by SCADA.

In order to facilitate performance assessment, a SCADA system should naturally be highly reliable.

Event data such as alarms, warnings, and log entries, should adequately record the events they describe, pointed out Clive.

The time series data should include status fields recording the duration of specific conditions during each averaging interval. Good retention of and easy access to historical data is a requisite.

"Simplicity is a key feature when it comes to integrating the system into a data aggregation strategy," shared Clive.

Peter Clive, technical development officer, SGURR Energy Ltd is scheduled to speak during Wind Energy Operations & Maintenance Summit 2008, scheduled to take place in London on 11-12 November this year.

Gamesa has strengthened its operations in Spain as the wind turbine manufacturer entered into a new agreement with Enel Unión Fenosa de Energías Renovables (EUFER) for the supply of 17 Gamesa G87-2.0 MW wind turbine generators, amounting to the installation of a total of 34 MW.

The wind turbine generators will be destined to the Valdesamario Wind Farm located in Ponferrada in the province of León.

This agreement includes the supply, installation and start-up of the wind turbine generators, as well as their operation and maintenance. The start of assembly work is foreseen for the last quarter of 2008.

In the first half of 2008, Gamesa increased its portfolio of wind turbine generator orders by 40 percent when compared to the end of 2007.

Gamesa, which managed a net profit of €198 million in the first half of 2008, shared that the wind turbine generators to be supplied to Valdesamario Wind Farm will contribute towards generating energy that respects the environment by avoiding the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere. More specifically, the annual production of these installations will replace 7,310 tons of petroleum equivalent per year and avoid the emission into the atmosphere of 51,000 tons of CO2 a year.

EDF Energy has chosen Garrad Hassan for the Front End Engineering Development (FEED) study related to Teesside Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of North East England.

Garrad Hassan, which has completed similar FEED studies for other UK offshore wind projects over the last couple of years, will be supported in this project by BOMEL Limited. The FEED study will be addressing areas of technical uncertainty in all aspects of the project.

Garrad Hassan will be responsible for all areas of the study: project management, wind turbine, layout design and analysis, offshore structures, electrical system and grid connection, O&M, marine installation, cable installation, H&S, risk management and procurement support.

It was in September last year, when consent was granted by the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) for the offshore windfarm project at Redcar in Teesside. That time, it was shared that the planned windfarm will be developed and run by EDF Energy and will consist of up to 30 turbines – capable of producing up to 90MW of electricity.

Teesside Offshore Wind Project Manager, Hugh Yendole, shared that the findings of the FEED study will be "very important in guiding the delivery of the Teesside offshore wind farm."

The project, when fully operational, could generate enough power every year to supply around 60,000 homes – the approximate combined volume of households in Redcar and Cleveland - with clean energy.

In another development, Ben Hendriks has joined Garrad Hassan's Turbine Design Group.

Hendriks will play a key role in both Garrad Hassan's turbine design team and its Dutch operation, by opening a new office near Alkmaar. To his credit, Hendriks has wind turbine experience spanning 17 years, at both ECN and Dutch manufacturer, WindMaster.

Energy Direct (WED) Ltd, an Irish Company with a focus on the Irish and UK markets, is to manage, finance, develop and maintain 15 on-site wind turbine facilities as part of a "behind the meter" electricity concept.

WED, which installs wind turbines on our customer's industrial sites via a turnkey service, is to spend €60m, installing wind turbines at 15 locations over the next four years. The company not only finances, owns, operates and maintains the turbines, but it also sells the electricity produced to its customers at a significant discount to their retail rate. This enables its customers to benefit from purchasing green energy at a significant discount to available market prices with no capital outlay.

The turnkey renewable energy source for manufacturing, retail and agricultural locations, that will be the first of its kind operated on a commercial level in the region WED focuses on, will break the link with spiralling energy costs, saving companies with a 4MW installation up to €1m within five years of installation, reported Irish Examiner. According to the same report, this will amount to a saving of over 9,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum and provide enough electricity to power the equivalent of 2236 households.

"The large-scale Munster-based project involves the installation of two 2MW turbines on-site, providing the company with an estimated €110k saving on its energy bill in year one," reportedly said WED managing director Dominic Costello. "The first step is a feasibility study to determine the economic viability of the project taking into consideration such criteria as wind resource, electrical load profile and planning criteria."

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