GE’s renewable energy business has announced the expansion of 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. 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 percent reduced wake losses and improved mechanical loads due to lower wake turbulence. This translates to up to 8 percent more profit for the wind 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.