This Common Issue Decreases Wind Energy Production

WindESCo Find, Fix, Measure goes beyond monitoring turbine performance to uncover actionable issues, recommend fixes, and measure improvements over time. This wind farm energy performance optimization solution continuously detects 60+ issues in wind turbines at scale.

A commonly detected turbine issue is non-optimal cut-in behavior.

WindESCo has observed turbines that do not cut-in at appropriate wind speeds. In this example, the turbine attempts to start up thousands of times, with only one successful start. 

This is an issue because wind speeds are sufficient to maintain operation, but the turbine does not start. This cannot be seen using 10-minute data because there isn't significant power curve behavior if the turbine is not producing power.

How do you identify this issue?

WindESCo identifies regions of failed or non-optimal cut-in by comparing wind speed, pitch behavior. We then quantify the annual energy production (AEP) opportunities. 

If the AEP opportunities are significant enough to be addressed, WindESCo recommends next steps to optimize the cut-in behavior (in this case by correcting the start-up turbine parameters).

• This issue had a 1% AEP impact on the turbine
• Correction of the issue increased revenue by $42,000/YR for the turbine

How can you tell the issue is corrected?

Once corrected, we are able to see that failed start-ups are no longer occurring on the turbine.

To see what Find, Fix, Measure can do for you, contact us today.