GE's renewable energy business expands its brilliant wind platform to include plant-level wind management software applications to improve overall wind farm output. Using the power of the Industrial Internet and turbine-to-turbine communications capabilities, GE's new software allows the turbines within a wind farm to act as a cohesive unit, rather than individual assets. Wind plant wake management, from GE Predictivity™, is the first farm-level management application launched by GE and enables customers to recapture lost power output from waking effects.
When capturing wind, turbines create a wake that impacts the volume and condition of the wind reaching turbines sited behind. With the wind farm wake management application, turbines balance performance and loads throughout the entire wind farm. In turn, wind farms can achieve greater power output as an overall plant, and customers can expect to see 5-10% reduced wake losses and improved mechanical loads due to lower wake turbulence. This translates to up to 8% more profit for the wind plant.
"In the past, wind plants have operated as a series of single autonomous units. With wind plant management, turbines can operate as part of an interconnected, cohesive team, as opposed to competing with one another for the best wind," said Anne McEntee, president and CEO of GE's renewable energy business. "Now, what used to be a series of 1-2 megawatt machines can operate more efficiently as a full-scale multi-megawatt power plant."
GE's wind plant management applications will be optional features on new projects. For the existing GE fleet, in the future the technology will be integrated into GE's Wind PowerUp* technology platform.
Developed in collaboration with GE's global research and development centers, new applications will continue to be introduced by GE. Wind farm wake management is a part of GE's brilliant wind platform, which harnesses the power of the Industrial Internet to analyze tens of thousands of data points on a wind farm every second, driving higher output, increasing services productivity and creating new revenue streams for customers. It also is one of GE's Predictivity technologies, using connectivity and advanced analytics.