Digitalization offers great potential for wind power

IEA Wind TCP Task 43 – Digitalization

RISE is contracted by the Swedish Energy Agency to participate in the international collaboration IEA Wind TCP Task 43 regarding digitalization in wind power. Task 43 approaches the topic in six work packages (WP). WP 1-3 (Roadmap, Data standards and Data science) form general basic aspects of digitalization. WP 4-6 (Digital wind resource assessment, Operation and maintenance and End of life) constitute applications where digitalizatio is deemed to have great potential to improve efficeincy and be of large value to a wind power plant. The reader is referred to the home page of Task 43 for more information.

Purpose and goal:

The primary goal is to collect input experience from Swedish companies and bring to Task 43 and to disseminate results from the Task to Swedish stake holders. The goal is achieved by active participation in the WPs, for instance compilation of current R&D results and best practices, publications and lectures.

Challenge:

Digitalization can create value for a wide variety of applications. For instance, there are Swedish companies developing and supplying commercial software based on large digital data streams being filtered, sorted and packaged to increase availability and performance. Limiting factors are access to data and the need for time consuming data manipulation to make the data reliable.

Another area is prediction of wind conditions and resulting power production. Swedish aspects, such as icing on blades, adds to the complexity in this field. In the short-term accurate forecasting of power output is essential to maintain balance of supply and demand of electricity. In the long-term prediction of power production is important to reduce risk and increase willingness to invest in wind power plants.

Yet another area is the ability of future wind power plants to supply ancillary services to the grid. The installed fleet of wind turbines possesses a large rotary inertia that can be used for that purpose. To do so requires not only implementation of controller algorithms at turbine and wind farm level, but also access and means to transfer data and information between the market, authorities and individual wind turbines.

Solution:

Part of the solution reads FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data. FAIR data means that a machine, usually a computer, can find data, access data, manipulate data and reuse manipulated data for further manipulation, information and decision making. More specifically Task 43 is about:

• Produce international standards for data formats and metadata formats so that wind power data from different sources will have a homogeneous appearance.
• Increase accessibility to data, partly by establishing and paving the way for marketplaces where data exchange can take place, partly by spreading information about accessible data.

Except for data itself, methods and algorithms need to be developed to manipulate it into relevant decision support. increased degree of digitalization and use of AI also increase the opportunity for more accurate power production forecasts.

Effect:

Through participation in an international research network RISE secures its role as a global leader in digitalization in the wind power sector. It ensures knowledge transfer between Swedish industry and international research, making the research relevant and Swedish industry involved and up to speed. In a larger context the project contributes to improving the competitiveness of renewable energy, wind power, and ensuring its contribution a stable and resilient power supply for the future.