Predictive analytics technology provider Onyx Insight has revealed that wind farm owners may be losing out without full access to turbine performance data.
According to a whitepaper published by the company, of the top condition monitoring system (CMS) hardware providers, who between them account for over 80% of the market, only one gives turbine owners and operators full access to CMS data.
Seven of them give no access to data at all, limiting the maintenance and servicing options of turbine owners.
The document, titled Standing in the Way of Control, is the first in series of whitepapers published as part of a working group initiative on data access, convened by Onyx Insight to highlight the costs to the wind power industry of restrictions on data access.
According to Onyx, while it is well understood that data access restrictions limit the industry’s ability to improve the performance of operational turbines, owners need clarity on what types of data are being restricted, how they are restricted, and the effects this may have on turbine performance.
Onyx Insight chief executive Bruce Hall said: “Wind farm owners and operators are leaving money on the table if they fail to secure access to all the operations and maintenance data necessary for the full scope of operational management and performance optimisation techniques on offer.
“Better data access across the board can lead to incremental gains, but there are also giant strides to be made, if owners and operators can obtain a better view of just a handful of critical data streams.”
Full access for O&M teams to relevant data, could reduce turbine operational costs by nearly one fifth and allow operators to hit ambitious, yet achievable, targets, the whitepaper asserts.
Failure to secure access to all data needed for an accurate assessment of turbines often compromises the diagnosis and correction of performance issues.
According to Onyx owner-operators experience restrictions on a wide range of data relating to turbine performance, including supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data and alarm codes, CMS data, oil and grease data, and inspection and reports, as well as gearbox kinematics.
The whitepaper addresses the full array of operational data streams required by wind farm operators, but which are often found to be missing, restricted or incomplete.
The document identifies three broad types of data restriction, comprising processing, where raw data is processed, packaged and aggregated across discrete time periods, limiting owners’ ability to understand fully what is happening in their machines; encryption, where owners are restricted access to their data by a gating process such as a fee; and obstruction, where the owner simply gets no access to data at all.
The whitepaper also includes a procurement checklist, which indicates the level of data access required for effective predictive maintenance.
The checklist can be used by owners to assess levels of data access across their own turbine fleets, and to hold suppliers to account for access levels.
Onyx Insight is also calling on stakeholders from across the wind energy sector who have encountered data access restrictions during the operation of wind energy assets to join a Data Access Working Group, with a view to raising awareness of and tackling this obstacle to effective, profitable operation.