Vaisala’s new weather-augmented solution enhances wind farm profitability

Recognizing how adverse weather and environmental conditions can negatively impact wind farm performance, reliability, safety and cost, Vaisala is revolutionizing wind energy operations through its first-of-its-kind “weather-augmented wind farm” approach. By providing a 360° view of atmospheric conditions across wind farms, Vaisala’s weather-augmented approach enhances wind farm profitability through higher production, improved reliability, optimized operations and maintenance, all while reducing overall costs.

With the ability to tailor a solution based on unique needs and existing infrastructure, Vaisala’s powerful solution suite equips wind farm operators with a modular and scalable approach to atmospheric awareness. A breadth of solutions and services — including wind lidars, meteorological sensors, lightning monitoring, and advanced data analytics — work seamlessly together under one unified intelligence platform.

Operational benefits:

• Protecting turbines against fatigue and extreme loads.
• Optimizing turbine set points and curtailments.
• Assessing real-time conditions to analyze and optimize performance.
• Enabling quick and accurate power performance testing.
• Reducing wake losses to increase energy production.
• Improving performance monitoring and energy production forecasting accuracy, including ramp event prediction.
• Detecting and nowcasting wind gusts and rapid shifts to protect assets.
• Providing lightning prediction and strike risk assessment.
• Monitoring air density, temperature, visibility, icing, precipitation, etc. to optimize turbine assessment.

Wind farm- and turbine-level solutions:

• Wind farm-level
  • WindCube vertical profilers for continuous wind monitoring.
  • WindCube Scan lidars for wake management, gust mitigation, and ramp forecasting.
  • WindCube Nacelle lidars for performance diagnosis and optimization.
  • Precipitation sensors.
  • CL61 ceilometers.
• Turbine-level
  • WindCube Nacelle for turbine control and power performance testing.
  • Ultrasonic wind sensors and pressure/temperature/humidity sensors.
  • Visibility and precipitation sensors.
  • Lightning forecasting and strike damage potential integrated into control systems.

Built on trusted principles and technology, Vaisala’s measurement technologies and data services are ideally suited to a growing, evolving wind industry.

“Vaisala inherently understands the vast potential and consequential importance of harnessing wind energy for a greener future, helping our customers push the onshore and offshore industries into new frontiers with ambitious weather solutions. Our modern, end-to-end weather-augmented solutions provide constant awareness to meet the most pressing energy and climate challenges of our time,” said Matthieu Boquet, Head of Wind Operations for Vaisala.

News item from Vaisala

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