Digital system and method for managing a wind farm having plurality of wind turbines coupled to power grid

• US 10,132,295 B2
• Filed: 03/21/2016
• Issued: 11/20/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: GE Infrastructure Technology, LLC (General Electric Company)
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Lund, Arnold M., Mochel, Karl, Lin, Jeng-Weei, Onetto, Raimundo, Srinivasan, Jayanthi, Gregg, Peter, Bergman, Jeffrey Eric, Hartling, Kenneth D., Ahmed, Anwar, Chotai, Sham
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Ramesh B
• Application Number:
  US15/075,231
• Publication Number:
  US 20160333855A1
• Time in Patent Office: 974 Days
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 17/00 Monitoring or testing of wind motors, e.g. diagnostics testing during commissioning of wind motors F03D13/30
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 7/043 characterised by the type of control logic
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 7/045 with model-based controls
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 7/047 characterised by the controller architecture, e.g. multiple processors or data communications
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 7/048 controlling wind farms
• CPC Class Codes: F03D 9/257 the wind motor being part of a wind farm
• CPC Class Codes: F05B 2260/82 Forecasts
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 13/041 in which a variable is automatically adjusted to optimise the performance
• CPC Class Codes: Y02E 10/72 Wind turbines with rotation axis in wind direction
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 80/20 using renewable energy

Abstract

The present disclosure is directed to a digital system for managing a wind farm having a plurality of wind turbines electrically coupled to a power grid. The system includes a farm-based first communication network having one or more individual wind turbine control systems communicatively coupled to the one or more wind turbines and an overall wind farm control system. The system also includes a cloud-based second communication network communicatively coupled to the first communication network via an industrial gateway. The second communication network includes a digital infrastructure having a plurality of digital models of the one or more wind turbines, wherein the plurality of digital models of the one or more wind turbines are continuously updated during operation of the wind farm via data supplied by the farm-based first communication network.

Claims

1. A digital system for managing a wind farm having a plurality of wind turbines electrically coupled to a power grid, the system comprising:

a farm-based first communication network comprising one or more individual wind turbine control systems communicatively coupled to the one or more wind turbines and an overall wind farm control system;

a cloud-based second communication network communicatively coupled to the first communication network via an industrial gateway, the second communication network comprising a digital infrastructure comprising a plurality of digital models of the one or more wind turbines,

wherein the plurality of digital models of the one or more wind turbines are continuously updated during operation of the wind farm via data supplied by the farm-based first communication network; and

wherein the plurality of digital models includes physics-based models of the one or more wind turbines representing behavior thereof.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the one or more individual wind turbine control systems comprises a real-time control system, and wherein the overall wind farm control system comprises a non-real-time control system.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the overall wind farm control system comprises a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system of the wind farm.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein each of the one or more wind turbines comprise one or more sensors configured to collect at least one of operating data or wind data from respective wind turbines and send collected data to the SCADA system, wherein the SCADA system is further configured to communicate the collected data to the second communications network.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one industrial firewall configured between the first and second communication networks, the industrial firewall configured to monitor incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules so as to protect the digital system.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising a customer cloud-based infrastructure communicatively coupled to the second communication network and an additional firewall configured between the second communication network and the customer cloud-based infrastructure.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the first communications network further comprises a time-series data store communicatively coupled to the one or more wind turbines.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the industrial gateway further comprises at least one of a data collector, an edge analytics module, and a watchdog module.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a user interface communicatively coupled to the first and second communication networks.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the digital infrastructure comprises at least one of an asset performance management module, a demand forecast module, a wind forecast module, an operations optimization module, a market performance module, an anomaly detection module, a real-time analytics module, an analytics engine module, an analytics catalog module, a data store module, a meso scale data module, a historical operational date module, a data ingestion module, a data stitching module, or a data aggregation module.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising a business driver-based modeling module configured to translate data from the demand forecast module and the wind forecast module into a business model configured to maximize energy production while maintaining optimal operating conditions.

12. A computer-implemented method for managing a wind farm having a plurality of wind turbines, the method comprising:

monitoring, via one or more sensors located on each of the plurality of wind turbines, one or more operating parameters of the wind turbines;

receiving, via a farm-based first communication network, signals generated by the one or more sensors, the first communication network having one or more individual wind turbine control systems communicatively coupled to the one or more wind turbines and an overall wind farm control system;

communicating, via the first communication network, the signals to a cloud-based second communication network via an industrial gateway, the second communication network having a digital infrastructure with a plurality of digital models of the one or more wind turbines; and

controlling, via the digital models of the second communication network, one or more operating parameters of the wind farm based on the signals;

wherein the plurality of digital models include physics-based models of the one or more wind turbines representing behavior thereof.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

continuously transferring data between the first communication network and the second communication network,

analyzing the data via an analytics module, and

continuously updating the digital models of the second communication network during operation of the wind farm via based on the analytics module.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising monitoring, via an industrial firewall configured between the first and second communication networks, incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules so as to protect the digital system.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising communicating at least one of the one or more operating parameters or the digital models to a customer cloud-based infrastructure communicatively coupled to the second communication network.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising storing, via a time-series data store of the first communications network, the signals generated by the one or more sensors.

17. The method of claim 12, wherein the industrial gateway further comprises at least one of a data collector, an edge analytics module, and a watchdog module.

18. The method of claim 12, further comprising a user interface communicatively coupled to the first and second communication networks.

19. The method of claim 12, wherein the digital infrastructure comprises at least one of an asset performance management module, a demand forecast module, a wind forecast module, an operations optimization module, a market performance module, an anomaly detection module, a real-time analytics module, an analytics engine module, an analytics catalog module, a data store module, a meso scale data module, a historical operational date module, a data ingestion module, a data stitching module, or a data aggregation module.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising a business driver-based modeling module configured to translate data from the demand forecast module and the wind forecast module into a business model configured to maximize energy production while maintaining optimal operating conditions.