CONTEXT

Wind turbine manufacturing division of a well-diversified conglomerate was offered a variety of services to maximize wind farm production using IoT. This is accomplished by measuring wind speed, wind direction, pitch angle, yaw angle, power production, and other parameters at each turbine, and transmitting it to an IoT hub for optimizing production of the wind farm.

RESOLUTION

Our consultants used data from radar and SCADA with computational fluid dynamics models to adjust pitch of blades and yaw of turbines to increase the energy production of the wind farm. At wind speeds that are higher than the rated value, the power output is increased above the rating by adjusting the generator speed and gearbox torque, while ensuring that the stress and fatigue loading of the turbine are within acceptable level. For lower than rated wind speeds, the blade pitch, tip speed, and yaw position are adjusted to change the power curve to yield a higher power output.

RESULT

A 5% to 10% increase in annual energy production under many weather conditions was observed as a result of the effective utilization of real time measurements of the energy production in wind farms.