Operation and Maintenence

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Permalink Reply by Ian Graham on March 6, 2010 at 11:49am

Well in a simple sense their needs to be direct lines of communication and direct lines of responsibility. SCADA is the key to everything at that critial cross-over with plant operator and wind turbine operator, they infact should be the same person at the power plant level (sometimes called a scheduler).

That can be a challenge. Another challenge is keeping the process of communication between utility and turbine operators very clear and effective, key situations include grid outages/faults (scheduled and not scheduled), frequency deviations, high wind over generation, clear high wind event prediction, maintenance overhauls (like ice shutdown).

The utility relyies upon turbine generated electrons once they start spinning, so the operator must be very effective to communicate any issues in which the amount of power delivered will deviate. Additionally the power plant operators must communicate problems they are having with those said electrons and make sure every "event" is logged and route cause investigation happens no matter the source of the issue.

IG