Presentations

Abstract

When nearing the end of life and beyond it, wind turbines face challenges that require good management and the implementation of new solutions and logic to optimize production during its remaining life span. To improve the performance of the turbines while extending their lifetime, ERG SpA planned the installation of new blades in Vestas V47 turbines. Installing new blades required the wind turbine main control strategy to account for the new loads and performance, something that was not possible with the original controller. ERG chose open controller solutions from DEIF for this purpose, something that made the operation of the wind turbines safe under this scenario. The open controller solution is just the replacement of the original main controller with a third-party controller that gives full and unrestricted access to all the functionalities and parameters of the controller. With the help of the open control solution ERG also improved the performance and management of the wind turbines in examples like the following: - Independency from the OEM – O&M proper teams react faster to alarms and improve the performance of O&M activities - Adapt the wind park performance to local conditions: set new pitch strategies to increase performance during certain weather conditions (e.g power drops) - Avoidance of downtimes related to VRCC failures – the new controller adapts the control strategy to operate safely without the VRCC installed - Improve monitoring and predictive maintenance thanks advanced sensors and standard communication protocols, resulting increase of data and information than the original controller With these changes ERG is managing the assets satisfactorily, expanding the project to V47 turbines with original blades too. The projects produce more now, the OPEX is improved and ERG Maintenance teams work with much more focused on the turbines, keeping them in a good condition. (The abstract is drafted in coordination with ERG Power Generation, we propose to present the case in two parts: ERG describes the project, DEIF presents the part related to the new controllers)