Monitoring the Relationship Between Wind Speed and Power Generation

Situation

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Energy companies that operate wind farms must continuously control and optimize them to ensure they are generating the most power in relationship to the wind. Large wind turbines that turn in the wind to produce energy are one of the critical assets on site. The conversion from wind to electricity has an optimal correlation to maximize the performance of the equipment.

Problem

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To optimize the relationship between power generation and steady wind speed, operational experts need to define the good operating zone from the cut-in speed to the cut-out speed of the turbine. This curve must then be monitored continuously to avoid any operating condition anomalies.

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Solution

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• Use TrendMiner’s Scatterplot Visualization Mode to focus on the correlation between power and wind speed tags
• Filter out all non-relative periods
• Define the good curve and use the Operating Area Search to look for periods when this correlation does not properly match
• Perform a Cross-Asset analysis of the remaining turbines on the grid

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Approach

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• Several things could cause a loss in correlation, including problems with the turbine’s rotor speed or loss of wind direction in relation to its blades
• When operational experts know they have lost the good operating zone in one turbine, they often will reboot its system (which usually takes less than an hour) rather than find a specific root cause

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Results

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• Using TrendMiner, operational experts were able to determine the good operating zone that is the optimal correlation between wind speed and power generation
• They set up a monitoring system to follow the optimal correlation between a turbine and wind speed
• When the correlation no longer shows the optimal curve, operational experts receive an alert and can begin searching for the root cause of the anomaly

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