Wind farms globally are missing out on billions of dollars in revenues and there’s a simple way to fix it. That’s the conclusion from a review underway by Vayu Corp., a Ystrategies Corp. portfolio company, of all U.S., Canadian, and European wind projects. Through the analysis of publicly available data and use of its optimization software, Vayu has already identified more than $500 million in estimated incremental revenue opportunities for just 31 of the more than 400 wind farms in the U.S.
Using a wide variety of publicly available data, including historical weather and wind patterns, elevation, types of turbines (including thrust and power curves), and exact turbine locations, Vayu’s powerful software service can run simulated optimization scenarios on any wind farm.
VayuAI is a cloud computing platform that lets users access breakthroughs in plant-level wind farm optimization and control via a simple-to-use web-based interface. Learn more here.
With over 400 U.S. wind farms pending optimization and the European wind footprint estimated to be twice that of the U.S., the additional revenue opportunity for owners, operators and investors may be as much as $25 billion.
According to Vayu, the culprit is wind-turbine wake.
“Much like an airplane or a boat, each wind turbine creates its own wake. One of the biggest impingements in maximizing wind production is managing the impact that wake has on degrading the efficiency of the wind turbines around it,” said Jim Kiles, CEO of Vayu.
According to Kiles, it is not as simple as adjusting each turbine individually to fix the problem, “It’s extremely complicated when you look at the entire farm – each turbine creates its own wake that impacts the performance of the others. So when you adjust one, it affects the entire array.”
“The challenge is to get all turbines to work together so they are all operating at maximum efficiency. Vayu’s optimization and AI/machine learning software does the complicated math to ensure all the turbines in the farm work cooperatively to maximize annual production,” said Doug Gilbert-Smith, Vice President of Corporate Development of Vayu. “That data can feed into existing wind farm control systems to properly position each turbine in real time and materially increase revenues.”
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