What if the wind is changing?
While a wind power plant is running, anything can happen. For you of course it is crucial to react as fast as possible due to changes. Effective controling takes the wind out of the sails of any maintenance costs and malfunctions. We support you with a standardized control system that can be used both locally and centrally in accordance with your requirements. The possible set-up goes from a higher-level control center to mobile clients for the technicians on site. Not only a variety of subsystems, but also different service partners can be involved in this process.
Effective turbine and wind farm management
From planning and initial commissioning through to productive operation, the optimization of the available resources plays an important role. Starting with the implementation of technology on site and extending to the integration of subsystems and further options such as geographical information systems (GIS) or video applications. Especially for offshore installations the deployment of technicians on site generally involves high costs and complex logistics. In these offshore locations - but also in many remotely located wind farms on dry land - it is worth using centrally managed control systems with options for remote control.Thanks to our standardized Multilevel Wind SCADA Center (MWSC) solution, based on the SIMATIC WinCC Open Architecture SCADA System, you can call upon tried and tested control tools and deploy them at all levels. The integration of additional subsystems permits a holistic consideration of all influencing factors – the particularly open, flexible approach of MWSC supports these integrations and merges the resulting conglomerate of information into a coherent overall picture, retrievable at any time, anywhere in the world, and adapted to the respective user.
The advantages are obvious: One software package is used across all hierarchies. This can be used regardless of whether the operating system is Windows or Linux and offers a uniform look-and-feel due to standardization based on IEC 61400-25. In addition, native user interfaces are available for mobile terminals so that the information that is actually required can always be accessed on site, even on Android and iOS devices. In addition, configurable local and central archives are available, on the basis of which KPIs can be directly calculated or research into the cause can be initiated when incidents occur. Using your existing plant knowledge as a customer, the integrated SmartSCADA add-on can be used for this purpose.
The Multilevel Wind SCADA Center (MWSC) forms the basis for holistic monitoring and control at different levels. This is a ready-to-use product which additionally offers a standardized starting point for expansions. International customers in the wind energy sector already trust in this extensive framework and use it to control their onshore and offshore wind farms.
MWSC at a technical level on site and mobile
Standardization makes it easy to give technical personnel equipped with mobile devices a quick overview and, in addition, to supply detailed information on components. Using a mobile app or a laptop, authorized persons always have the correct and important information to hand. This allows to observe the status of the maintained object based on individual user rights. Assigned employees are provided with the information that is relevant to them. In addition, there is the possibility of initiating, tracking and completing the performance of jobs in this way by connecting to a ticket system.
MWSC at turbine level
By means of the standardized combination of the different turbine components, it is easy to quickly obtain an overall picture of the turbine condition. In this way, the MWSC structure enables a clear view of prominent values such as wind speed, output or alarm messages. In addition, with just a few clicks, it is possible to obtain a detailed view of the individual components and their key values, thus enabling effective remote control of a turbine.
MWSC at wind farm level
A central control room offers the possibility of reacting promptly and cost-effectively to changes in the wind farm and initiating appropriate actions. Whether the control room acquires collected turbine data from a turbine server or the turbines are connected directly to the windfarm server is left to the design of your wind farm. The most important considerations when making this decision are the possibility of local processing if a connection fails, of the geographical distribution of the turbines, and the existing infrastructure to connect. Seen in a wider context, this structure can also be designed as the summary for service providers, who may only be responsible for certain components of the turbines.
MWSC as higher-level control center
Higher level control centers can also be integrated in a variety of ways. By this we mean the connection of different subsystems. Among other things, this may involve a larger number of wind farms that you look after. The MWSC can however also form the basis for the integration of other energy plants. For example, solar power plants or other forms of power plant can be integrated into the solution, and you ultimately have at your disposal an extensive wind farm management system with which an effective energy generation strategy can also be developed and operated.
With optimum networking, the SIMATIC SCADA systems from Siemens offer the best basis for integration and design of your wind turbines and other renewable energy plants. With many years of experience as a partner in the field, Siemens stands for reliability and sustainable solutions – also as far as its software is concerned. Safety and modern requirements are given top priority in our solutions and will also add value to your plant.
No two windfarms are the same. You know that, and so do we. Apart from standardization, the Multilevel Wind SCADA Center (MWSC) therefore also offers numerous options for creating your own individual solution. You hold the key to an adapted system environment in your hand, based on a particularly scalable, flexible SCADA system.
The Mulitilevel Wind SCADA Center has been implemented on the basis of SIMATIC WinCC Open Architecture. This SCADA system offers numerous possibilities for to expand and add services. In principle, the MWSC is regarded as a basic framework to integrate your requirements. It can be used consistently from the higher-level control center and wind farm control rooms down to the turbine and technician level. The system offers simple, modular building blocks – enabling new turbines or complete wind farms to be integrated into the system in a very short time. This can always be integrated either from a central point or on site and even in defined degrees of detail for each component. The service department obtains access to all online data, alarms and histories for optimum fault analysis of wind energy installations. The data can be stored both locally and centrally. For a central storage, it is possible to select not only corresponding data compression but also a time interval for synchronization. In this way, valuable resources can be saved in case the infrastructure of the installation make this necessary.
Full control at every level
Whether at turbine, wind-farm or supervisory level – you have access to the needed data at all times from any location. This also includes the possibility of archiving the data. In this way you establish additional security and can synchronize local information accordingly. This enables to compensate short connection failures or also configured synchronization cycles to be defined as a precautionary measure to avoid continuous loading at peak times.
A better overview everywhere
The multi-monitor concept offers direct access to all necessary graphics and data screens of all connected wind turbines. This means that all relevant information is available to the service technician in no time at all. Even direct comparisons with similar wind turbines are possible with just a few clicks. Customizable graphic plant images with live data enable adaptation to customer-specific needs.
Immediate benefits, prepared for the future
- Integrated architecture of turbines and wind-farm SCADA, standardized technician views
- Various functions and interfaces for integration of a wide variety of plants and units
- Secured, event-oriented, encryptable and consistent communication – data consistency of relevant data in the control center is ensured, even in the event of connection failures
- Permits on-demand access to real-time and historical data
- Web-capability, support also for mobile devices by means of app download for Android and iOS
- Tolerant toward connection failures, high availability up to double redundancy
- Integrated maintenance management and fault logs
- Long-term data storage at turbine and wind farm level, with evaluations across wind farms and turbines
- Configurable data compression between local processing (seconds) and control center (standard 10 minutes)
- Video management for access control and site monitoring
- Different user-roles predefined – from operating personnel to manufacturer service
- Transfers only the data that the user would currently like to evaluate and is permitted to retrieve
A great deal of knowledge is already invested in the existing solution. We will be happy to support you with the corresponding information. If certain functionalities are not yet available, the framework is flexible enough to be expanded on an individual basis. This includes, on the one hand, solutions from the underlying SCADA system, such as SmartSCADA for KPI calculation or for identifying the causes of certain behavior. Additional expansions can likewise be integrated. Furthermore, the MWSC also offers possibilities for integrating the customer's own developments. This connection gives rise to unique opportunities for your optimum management environment at all levels. Together, let us make use of the prevailing wind and find the best solution.
