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Increase Production
Wind
The wind power industry is maturing, and with more projects entering service around the world, the industry finds itself facing an integrity issue because wind farm operators are unable to explain their plant performance.
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Increase Production
The wind power industry is maturing, and with more projects entering service around the world, the industry finds itself facing an integrity issue because wind farm operators are unable to explain their plant performance. Standard power industry operations and maintenance (O&M) areas such as maintenance, health and safety, and to some extent availability performance can be tracked, trended, and managed utilizing standard power industry Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
However, the primary challenge for robust performance management of any wind farm is unique in the power sector as rotor plane inflow conditions are not controlled nor defined. This means without smart and nuanced data integrity checks and analytics, it is difficult to separate wind turbine performance issues from wind resource variation. This presents performance integrity issues for many wind farm operators and owners who do not have clarity on their wind farm performance.
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Analysis
Clir conducts analysis to identify what actions can be taken to result in the highest return on investment for any given project. This analysis typically includes a thorough assessment of:
- Downtime
- Curtailment strategies
- Turbine control
- Performance degradation
- Static and dynamic yaw alignment
- High-frequency data
Analysis outcomes are communicated via the Clir Actions Page, listing the expected impact in MWh, the likelihood of implementation, and recommended next steps.
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Detectors
Clir’s suite of automated detectors monitors turbine behaviour at each wind farm. The detectors highlight any abnormal behaviour, providing start and end time, turbines affected, and associated event allocations and status code. Detectors include:
- Missing Data
- Derates
- Boost/Uprated mode
- Underperformance
- Overperformance
- Unexplained derate
- Not reaching rated power
- Unexplained outage
- Derated due to curtailment (birds, bats, noise, grid, icing)
Results from the detectors are displayed on the Events Page with all turbine events.
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Success Story
Background
Following the completion of a successful pilot project in 2019, Clir was awarded a secondary contract to assess a further 1GW of the client's assets located in numerous regions across the globe. The portfolio was complex due to being operated by multiple utility-scale partners and utilized seven different turbine types from four OEM's.
The Project
After agreeing the most appropriate data connection method to each project, the assets were onboarded to the Clir platform in less than two months.
Once onboarded, Clir planned and delivered a comprehensive assessment of the portfolio’s performance to identify methods of increasing annual energy production. The analysis plan was tailored to each project respectively and included assessment of event analysis, curtailment, turbine control, icing, static and dynamic yaw, site conditions, and asset health.
The Result
Clir’s analysis identified
- 2%+ of AEP gains
- 30+ unknown component issues.
The result of the findings translates to over $6m of annual revenue and a greater than 10x return on investment.