At the webinar on wind farms redevelopment, organised by RAWI together with Basque Trade & Investment Russia (a member of the RAWI) on June 29, 2021, the leading companies of the wind energy cluster of the Basque Country spoke about their own developments to extend the life of wind power plants, increase power output and optimise operating costs.
While most wind farms are designed for 20 years of trouble-free operation, Ruben Ruiz from Nabla Wind Hub, a global provider of wind farm upgrades, described the technology that has enabled the company to extend the life of a wind farm to 40 years, which has not only doubled the capacity of the wind turbines but also the return on investment made in the project.
Extending the service life of wind farms is not the only solution proposed by Nabla Wind Hub to increase power output and optimise maintenance costs. After a preliminary analysis of a wind farm, it is possible, for example, to increase the rotor diameter of wind turbines or retrofit them with newest types of blades, etc.
With Nabla Wind Hub technologies, the return on investment put up in wind power projects can be increased by 15-30%, depending on the characteristics of the particular wind farm, and the cost of maintenance can be reduced by 10-20%.
Vincent Pierre Reynaud, regional office manager of the IT company PCVUE SOLUTIONS, spoke about the benefits of developing real-time data collection for wind energy assets.
As an example, Vincent Pierre Reynaud cited his company’s experience with Iberdrola. Thanks to the technologies proposed by PCVUE SOLUTIONS, Iberdrola has been able to reduce wind turbines downtime, thereby increasing their operating time and thus the power output in general.
PCVUE SOLUTIONS has created PсVue, a SCADA system that generates reports in real time and works in conjunction with an emergency alarm system and mobile applications for the power industry. PсVue can be installed on a large number of devices and implemented in multi-level systems. The software is now used by some 300 wind power plants (over 9,000 MW) around the world, and data from PсVue-equipped dispatch centres enable the Spanish national grid operator to manage power grid processes more efficiently.
If you happen to skip the webinar, please use the link to the video and the presentations.