Getting the most out of assets is the priority number one in the list of any company. In the energy sector, this question is equally important to companies which own renewable energy generation plants.
We all know that if turbines are on while the price is high, owners make money. If they’re on when the prices fall, owners lose money. And if the regional authority demands all turbines to be turned off, owners must comply within 10 minutes or face stiff penalties.
You can’t keep enough operators out in the desert 24 hours a day to handle this manually. BaxEnergy’s SCADA solution for remote monitoring and control system brings renewable energy assets into the 21st Century.
Imagine having a platform that allows you to monitor and control your multi-technology assets in real-time, including substations and other relevant equipment. How do you think you could use it to optimize your production?
There are several ways in which implementing a remote-control system can be useful, here you’ll find some case studies from BaxEnergy’s customers.
Remote-control for renewable energy assets is key
How many times have you received a call from your grid operator saying “we need to power down the turbines, we can either kick the switch in the substation or you can remotely stop it”?
Now imagine being able to answer the operator “okay, I’m going to stop turbines in a minute”. In fact, by implementing remote control, commands are sent to remote assets relating to their operations, giving extensive remote management capabilities that are usually only available onsite.
You can eliminate the need for onsite maintenance for many frequent issues and prevent any additional damage by remotely turning off and troubleshooting the problematic asset. This grants quicker response to issues while minimizing the need to physically visit the sites and the associated costs, translating into positive economic results based on a more efficient predictive maintenance approach.
Remote control optimizes your energy marketing
The great potential of remote control is virtually the possibility to optimize the marketing of energy.
Even before the Ukrainian war, energy prices were expected to increase in Europe. This also led to a big shift: a lot of companies which were formally in public subsidies are now selling their energy on the market. One of the requirements, though, is that the companies buying and pricing electricity have production control over it.
For companies which are investing in growth, having a centralized tool integrated with energy trading systems is a big win in this case. They can start and stop turbines when needed and get better market prices and better offers for selling their energy.
Remote control to comply to national environmental standards
Environmental standards become stricter and stricter for renewable energy companies, but remote control can make operations easier. Some of our customers, especially in Germany and Austria, greatly benefitted from it.
For example, authorities in Germany requested our client to stop the turbines whenever there are farmers going onsite. While cutting grass, birds might find food lying on the soil and while preying they might be hit by a turbine blade. So, in order to reduce collision risks, the company has to stop turbines whenever it is requested by authorities.
For this kind of unscheduled stops, BaxEnergy provided the company with an email parsing tool which extracts data from the inbox and only processes email from known and secure sources. In this case remote control was really an enables, because it allowed turbines to operate under these circumstances. Otherwise, the alternative for the customer would have been to have 24/7 on duty operators.
Remote control to improve O&M
Some of the factors that influence revenues the most are Operations & Maintenance activities.
Having advanced turbine control strategies not only supports maximum performance, but at the same time ensures safe and reliable turbine operations. Supervisory algorithms safeguard a stable operation within a limited range of loads, while sophisticated and customized start/stop procedures prevent the turbine from entering into critical operating conditions.
With Energy Studio Pro®, you can create a list of halt expressions that will be evaluated continuously, giving the chance to automatically stop the turbines in particular circumstances. For example, you may need to stop one wind turbine or a set of wind turbines if they interfere with the surrounding environment, human or fauna presence. With remote control you can immediately do it, without additional hardware on-site.
Contact our experts to find out many other beneficial ways in which remote control can help your business grow!
