Renewable Energy

To keep up with strong global demand, renewable energy companies have been greatly increasing their capacity. In a World Wind Energy Association study, the cumulative capacity of the wind energy sector has increased from 24 GW in 2001 to 370 GW in 2014. However, with strong growth comes the challenge of scaling operational excellence and maintaining profitability. Companies are continually seeking improved methods to manage much larger capacities, with many more physical assets, located in widely distributed and remote areas – make for a very complex situation. This is where the next wave of innovation to address these growing requirements, will be driven by sensors and data – in other words, the Internet of Things (IoT).

Smart Wind Farms

Wind farms are exposed to continually changing wind conditions, are often found in remote locations and are fixed in structural height and orientation. These variables present several challenges for wind farms to increase productivity and maintain operational excellence and efficiency.

A wind turbine can be transformed into a smart wind turbine that is remotely controlled and monitored, able to change its orientation to leverage and adapt to continually changing wind conditions, as well as monitor its own turbine efficiency and operation for impending failures.

Smart wind farm capabilities like this are made possible through a collection of smart sensors that continually measure wind direction and speed, as well as sensors that monitor the wind turbines temperature, acceleration and vibrations. The data is then sent to the cloud in real-time using telemetry, where wind maps, analytics and machine learning continually monitor changing wind conditions and a ‘digital twin’ of the wind turbine. The output is information used for detecting necessary turbine orientation changes for increased efficiency and alerts for predictive maintenance for high turbine uptime.