GE introduces Digital Wind Farm ecosystem to improve wind power production

GE has introduced Digital Wind Farm, a wind energy ecosystem that combines turbines with digital infrastructure, which claimed to improve energy production of wind farms by up to 20%.

The ecosystem claimed to enhance production, reduce costs and boost operating efficiency of a wind farm and help the wind industry generate up to $50bn of value.

It will use Industrial Internet,an interconnected digital technology to integrate renewable power into the existing power grid efficiently.

GE said that the Digital Wind Farm ecosystem starts with the production of the turbines using the company’s 2MW platform.

The platform uses a digital twin modelling system, that can create up 20 different turbine configurations at unique pad location across a wind farm.

Each turbine will also be connected to advanced networks; capable of analysing turbine operations in real time and make necessary adjustments to improve operating efficiencies.

Later, the embedded sensors of the turbines are connected to gather data for analysis using GE’s Predix software.

The software will allow operators to examine performance from data including temperature, turbine misalignments or vibrations across the turbines and farms.

According to GE, the system can become more predictive with the help of the collected data and it can help in increasing energy production of the wind farms by up to 20%.

GE Power & Water CEO Steve Bolze said: “Big data is worthless without the insight to take action, and our vision for the industry is to use today’s data to predict tomorrow’s outcomes.

“By harnessing the full power of the Industrial Internet, we can create a world where wind farms learn, adapt and perform better tomorrow than they do today.”