Posters

Abstract

The wind turbine upgrade is an ever growing market. Software updates from turbine manufacturers or hardware upgrades like vortex generators are frequently being used on the wind O&M market to improve the operation of the turbines and to maximise their power output. Better performance, higher production and other operative gains are usually expected but always hard to quantify in reality, and therefore making it difficult to demonstrate what asset 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 (and, by extension, any significant change on the turbine) generate on a wind turbine. This new comprehensive method considers an intelligent combination of the data gathered by our in-house technology Windfit along with turbine SCADA data. In practical terms, the system Windfit generates a continuous stream of independent and high frequency data that allows it to perform a detailed diagnosis of any changes applied to the operational parameters of the turbine. At the same time, a new analytical tool has been developed to better combine the high frequency data from Windfit with the turbine SCADA data. This approach can provide a precise evaluation and quantification of the change on turbine AEP following an upgrade through a detailed analysis of the turbine power curve and by comparing its performance to neighbouring turbines. During the presentation results from this new approach will be exposed. This will include real cases from wind farms that had software and hardware upgrades implemented, such as turbine software upgrades, controller retrofits or blade add-ons like vortex generators. The presented method allowed the asset owners to identify and quantify the AEP gains and to understand the overall changes on turbine performance and operational parameters. However, other unwanted consequences like a change in turbine vibrations or yaw dynamics were also observed, highlighting the need for external validations in order to provide confidence to the owners when upgrading their assets. In addition, the showcased method approaches the upgrade market from an external perspective in order to provide a precise and independent evaluation of the changes that turbine upgrades can mean for wind assets, their production, performance, and overall operational performance. Finally, this presentation will provide further insight on what aspects need to be taken into consideration before implementing turbine upgrades, which will allow for an improved quality of such power improvement initiatives.