WindESCo Swarm™

The World's Only Commercial Solution for Wake Steering and Collective Control at Scale

Inspired by Nature

Taking cues from nature, and the intuitive decision-making of birds in flight, WindESCo Swarm™  allows turbines to learn from each other and is set to unlock millions of dollars for wind asset owners.

 

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Challenges

Underperformance is a widespread wind industry problem impacting owners and operators ability to achieve their LCOE goals. While millions of dollars are being invested in asset performance monitoring (APM), these solutions do not provide a measurable return on investment (ROI) by way of improved AEP.
Challenges 4

Wake Interference

Wind asset owners and operators struggle with their plants not performing to design expectation. In many cases, wind wakes are to blame. Wake losses are especially relevant in offshore plants. 

AEP losses from wake interference are estimated to be between 5-20%. 

 

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Unaddressed AEP Opportunity

Existing solutions highlight the problem but are unable to fix and increase plant output.

APM solutions only monitor and highlight problems but don’t fix underperformance.

Challenges 5

Resiliency

Global warming causes a threat to our energy infrastructure, including wind turbines. Regulators and investors are now requiring wind asset owners to take measures to protect against climate risk. 

Swarm protects wind assets from extreme events caused by climate change.

The Solution

WindESCo Swarm combines hardware and software as an integrated system.  By allowing turbines to communicate with and learn from each other, we help owners unlock their asset value. Swarm takes a multidisciplinary approach combining the fields of turbine loads, controls, meteorology, sensing and machine learning using IIOT and AEP analytics. The system can be implemented as part of new wind plants or as a retrofit or repower solution.

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Making Wind Turbines Social

Rather than optimizing turbine-by-turbine, Swarm looks at the entire site as a system. 

Continuous Optimization

Turbines adjust collectively to changing wind speed and direction, turbulence and wake losses.

IIOT Flexibility and Scalability

Swarm  is deployed through edge devices residing on each turbine and doesn't interfere with existing controllers.

System-as-a-Service Model

We make swarming budget-friendly and Swarm applications are continuously improved and expanded. 

More than Wake Steering


Wake steering alone will often not provide the ROI needed to make the financial case for collective control. WindESCo uses multiple applications to achieve AEP improvement. 

The System

Swarm can be divided into four layers:
 

Swarm AEP Software-as-a-Service

The core software layer running on an on-premise Swarm Server communicates with Swarm Edge devices on each turbine and makes real time yaw adjustments. Our applications include wake steering, yaw by consensus, predictive yaw and collective online static yaw, all designed to increase AEP production and reduce yaw drive wear and tear.

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Swarm Edge

The IIoT edge device is connected to the turbine controller to get real-time turbine level data and implement cooperative control. The Swarm Edge is built for WindESCo by our partner and trusted wind industry supplier, Phoenix Contact.

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Swarm Server

The wind plant level server is placed within the customer's firewall and communicates with each Swarm Edge and the wind plant SCADA server. Using this local server, WindESCo avoids the need to make changes to the original turbine control systems.

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Swarm Cloud Secure Network

The Swarm Cloud is an offline model optimization layer that provides long term analytics and reporting of Swarm effectiveness at a wind plant. The Swarm Cloud allows WindESCo to make continuous improvements to our applications and expand AEP opportunities at your site. 

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Getting Started

How to Swarm
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New Sites

Swarm can help new sites by allowing increased density on limited land and reduce impact of suboptimal micro-siting.

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Retrofit

Our System-as-a-Service improves site performance while working within operational budgets.

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Repowering

Increasing AEP to meet financing needs as part of a new repowering package and improving wake mitigation for larger blade replacements.

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Licensing

WindESCo Swarm is commercially available and licensable to OEMs and partners.

Swarm in Action

3 Years in Development, Currently Deployed at 3 Sites

WindESCo Swarm was developed with three years of concentrated investment. Swarm is actively optimizing 3 sites with over 300 MW of capacity.

The Swarm retrofit solution for a 1 GW fleet would provide a 5-year NPV of up to $30 million.
 

Learn More

Check out our Swarm discussion on the Uptime Podcast. Danian Zheng and Pete Bachant share the history, goals, methodologies and results from Swarm.  

 

 

Request a Swarm Assessment

All projects start with a feasibility assessment to determine if your site will benefit from Swarm. Schedule time with our team to learn more. 

Learn More