windalytics - ventodyne’s data analytics service
With windalytics, we analyze your wind farm to predict by how much its performance could be improved, and on which turbines wind farm control should be implemented.
Our pre-analysis service helps you understand if your park will benefit from wind farm control. The answer depends on various factors, including site conditions, and turbine layout. ventodyne’s analysis predicts by how much energy production can be boosted, identifies which turbines should be upgraded with wind farm control, and which would not yield significant benefits. This pre-analysis step reduces risks and initial commitment: based on its results, clients will be able to decide if to move ahead to the deployment phase based on precise quantitative indications.
Windalytics includes two steps: the calibration of ventodyne’s models, and the calculation of the optimal setpoints that maximize annual energy production (AEP).
Model calibration
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SCADA data from the farm is imported and cleaned
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Ambient wind conditions are reconstructed from the data
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The wind farm model is calibrated by matching model-predicted with measured power output from all turbines, and then validated with a separate subset of the data
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As a side product of this analysis, ventodyne can identify underperforming turbines, for example because of a yaw bias leading to poor turbine alignment with the wind
Match of model and measured power after calibration for two turbines, including uncertainty bands and number of occurrences.
Setpoint optimization
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Using the calibrated wind farm model, we compute the turbine setpoints (yaw misalignments) that optimize the wind park power production
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The optimization is performed for any possible ambient condition (wind speed, wind direction, turbulence intensity, discretized in small bins)
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The setpoints are imported into the wind farm controller, where they are dispatched to the individual turbines at run time (see dewake)
Estimation of AEP potential
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Based on the optimal setpoints, ventodyne estimates the AEP gain that can be obtained by deploying wind farm control at the park
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ventodyne computes the contribution of each wind turbine in the park to the total AEP gain, to guide clients in prioritizing the installation and exclude turbines that do not yield significant benefits, reducing costs
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ventodyne analyzes the effects of uncertainties, including uncertainties in site conditions, wind turbine performance, and model parameters, among others
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When historical SCADA data is not available –which is also the case of yet-to-be commissioned farms–, ventodyne performs the same analysis using the site resource assessment and meteorological reanalyses, skipping the model calibration phase. For new parks, this can lead to layouts with a smaller footprint
Efficiency breakdown by turbine. Without wakes, all turbines would have an efficiency of 100%. Arrows indicate efficiency gains/losses due to wind farm control.