GE Renewable Energy has secured contracts to boost the annual energy production (AEP) of two ageing wind farms in central Japan with a combined capacity of 52MW.
The two five-year contracts, involving GE's digital wind farm technology, will benefit Kinden's 30MW Shirama wind farm and Kandenko's 22MW Chosi plant.
The technology is estimated to add up to 5% more annual energy production to the Shirama facility and about 2% additional output to the Chosi plant.
The Chosi wind farm, which was commissioned in 2004, features 15 of GE’s 1.5s turbines.
At this plant, GE will implement its Prognostics and PowerUp Services software application. This will increase performance through fine tuning the pitch angle according to the site’s real-world operating conditions.
Data from these adjustments will help in analysing current and historical performance and can help in estimating the remaining life of important components at the project.
Chosi wind farm’s team says that the implementation of GE’s software applications can boost up to $650,000 during the remaining lifetime of the project.
The 30MW Shirama wind farm, which has 20 of GE’s 1.5sle turbines, was commissioned in 2009. The wind farm will implement Prognostics and PowerUP Services applications.
These applications will improve software and hardware enhancements that use new blade clearance operation mode, which will aid in the smooth functioning of the wind turbines and can improve the overall productivity by about 5%.
According to GE, its Digital Wind Farm suite of applications can be implemented on wide range of wind turbine models including the latest 2MW and 3MW models as well.
The software has been built on Predix software platform, which is the foundation for all of GE’s Industrial internet applications and also include cyber security applications.
Image: GE’s specialised software applications to improve efficiency of two Japanese wind projects. Photo: Courtesy of General Electric.