4 ms·

I suspect actually interfacing with the windmills is the hard part. Especially if you want to support many different types of devices. Local control, and no ne

• maxerickson 4y ago
  A typical wind farm will have 1 or 2 types of turbine.
• bluGill 4y ago
  All the wind turbines in any given windfarm come from the same manufacture, and they all have monitoring and control from the utility's main offices in whatever city (at the very least they have enough control to prevent damage when the weather gets bad, I don't know what else they can do). As such all that is needed is a software update from the manufacture to give the central office more control. The utility might own wind turbines from different manufactures, but they are not in the same wind farm. I suppose there might be places where two wind farms border each other that you want different devices, but for the most part you can optimize each wind farm individually with no need to worry about manufactures.
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I don't know that any of that is true. Farms can have different makes and models. I also think that there is a lot of on board control.
    • bluGill 4y ago
      Sure they can, but the reality how wind farms are built is they won't buy more than one make on any given farm. They place an order from some factory to deliver, getting a into the factory order stream is a large part of the process. Of course it does take a couple years and so there is plenty of opportunity for the factory to change internals in the middle, but the manufacturer is locked in before the first turbine goes up. Shipping is also rather expensive, so your are probably going with the nearest factory for everything. (each blade needs a semi with an oversize load permit, and "chase cars" both in front and behind with the right lights and signs) Of course if a turbine fails in 5 years (I don't know what the warranty is, so I'm going to use 5 years) they might replace it with one from someone else, but that isn't common. I don't know how much is onboard controls. However someone is feeding the weather instructions in, and when demand is low someone is telling a few to shut down. They also do remote monitoring for issues that maintenance needs to fix. That connection just needs an upgrade, along with some new software for the onboard controls and it can be done offboard. (this may not be easy, but compared to a turbine it is cheap)
      • s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Im guessing you are thinking of very different farms than I am. At the extreme, I am familiar with farms that have been expanded over 25 years and have a huge variety of builds. I am also aware of a number of farms that have at least 2 different sized turbines.
        • bluGill 4y ago
          I count an expansion as just putting up a new wind farm next to a previous one, which happens often. At least in my experience the expansions often get a different model (visually different), but I count that as a new wind farm. I'm reasonably sure that all wind turbines in my area come from Siemans. (they have a factory in my state, any other make would be shipped in from a considerable distance)
          • s1artibartfast 4y ago
            If the turbines are close enough to impact the air flow to the other ones then they are effectively the same for the purposes of the cfd model in the parent post