Posters

Abstract

The wind turbine upgrade market is booming. Software updates from turbine manufacturers or hardware upgrades like blade add-ons and similars are constantly being offered, negotiated and purchased on the highly lucrative wind O&M market. Performance, production and other operative gains are usually expected, promised or guaranteed, but always hard to quantify in reality, and therefore making it difficult to demonstrate what owners are gaining after such upgrades are implemented. In this presentation, we will introduce an innovative method to identify and quantify the changes on performance that turbine upgrades (or, by extension any significant change on the turbine) generate on a turbine and wind farm. A comprehensive method that evaluates turbine performance changes using a smart combination of independent and high frequency data with SCADA turbine data will be detailed. Some examples will be shown where the owner opted for software or hardware upgrades. Results ranging from positive gains in power output to unexpected negative consequences will be presented, showing how external validations are paramount in order to provide confidence to the owners when upgrading their assets.