Focus

On October 18, 2018, Goldwind released POWERNEST V2.0, the latest common application platform for wind-farm-end control at China Wind Power 2018. Compared with the first generation system released in June 2015, POWERNEST V2.0 has gone through three years of optimization and iteration, with comprehensive improvement and innovation in technology and function.

In wind-farm-level coordination, optimization and control, POWERNEST V2.0 supports typical applications for various scenarios. For the planning of sensing layer, it can manage multiple sensor data and states. On the hardware, the wind farm controller of POWERNEST V2.0 adopts Linux-based industrial PC, highly customized security policy, and system-level security design. On the software, it adopts platform architecture design to support modular and scalable application.

Features above enable the POWERNEST V2.0 to support more comprehensive businesses, especially the customization of wind farms, and effectively improve the power generation of various projects.

↑Automatic correction of turbine operating parameters

POWERNEST V2.0: overall update of wind farm productivity and friendliness

How to effectively improve turbine reliability and reduce operation and maintenance (O&M) costs during the operation of a wind power project? How to achieve optimal power generation and environmentally friendliness when designing a new project? These typical and common problems continue to be of concern to the owners, as the electricity price drops and people pay more attention to ecological protection.

As a common application platform for wind-farm-end control, POWERNEST V2.0 can support more advanced technologies and applications, effectively satisfying the value appeal of the owners. Its strength lies in its ability to achieve unified and coordinated control of wind farms; as a digital platform, it can support different business apps according to the needs of multiple business scenarios; as a digital wind farm portal, it provides seamless connection between cloud-end data and wind-farm-end data and between business flows.

↑Wind farm customization

The POWERNEST V2.0 consists of three functional modules.

First, wind-farm-level optimization. Based on the corrective optimization technique of machine learning, POWERNEST V2.0 is able to correct and optimize the design deviation of key operating parameters of the turbine, so that it is close to ideal operating state. The “wind farm optimization” technology enables turbine-by-turbine and sector-by-sector control and management of the entire wind farm. The “energy management” technology monitors the power consumption of the main power consumption components of the entire wind farm, and gives recommendations for optimization of operating parameters such as cut-in wind speed based on energy consumption statistics. In addition, POWERNEST V2.0 can actively control the wake, effectively reduce the power generation loss caused by the wake, thus the total power generation is increased and the overall fatigue load is lowered.

With this module, POWERNEST V2.0 can increase the AEP of the wind farm by 4%.

Second, health management. During the operation of a turbine, POWERNEST V2.0 continuously monitors the state parameters, diagnoses the health level of components with advanced failure models, and sends out fault alerts. These alerts can help the owner to plan O&M for projects. When the turbine enters sub-health state, the system can keep the turbine operating by taking advanced fault-tolerant measures, delaying the replacement of components and reducing power losses.

The POWERNEST V2.0 creates higher value through managing the health of turbines. Based on monitoring and early warning of service life, fault-tolerant and closed-loop life management, it makes online assessment on turbine life and realizes dynamic RUL management.

Through a series of technologies, POWERNEST V2.0 can reduce O&M time by an average of 100 hours per turbine, and downtime by an average of 80 hours per turbine.

Third, environmentally friendliness. As an optional configuration, the owner can choose specific features of this module according to the environmental requirements of the project. For example, if the project requires noise control, POWERNEST V2.0 can use accurate noise model to predict the noise at a specific location in the wind farm and adjust the turbine operating mode to reduce noise based on the predictions. With the shadow model and sensor, the system can also control the frequency of shadow flicker in the sensitive area of the wind farm. In addition, through the icing warning and early protection, POWERNEST V2.0 can further enhance turbine’s adaptability to the icing environment.

↑Estimated fatigue rate

As a wind-farm-end control system based on platform concept, POWERNEST V2.0 organically integrates advanced IoT, database, information security technology and proprietary technologies in key business areas. Its advanced architecture design enables the integration of multiple applications developed according to different businesses into highly customized solutions. It enables interdisciplinary integration of multiple technologies to serve specific needs and achieve a win-win situation for economic benefits and environmentally friendliness for wind power projects.