Vestas strengthens its position in Spain with its new control center developed CompactSCADA® Green Eagle Technology Solutions

Last week, Vestas finished the migration of its old system to a new control centre that acts as a delegate office, successfully passing the Spanish Electricity Network certification tests. From now, the new control centre, developed with CompactSCADA® Central Energy Control technology from Green Eagle Solutions, combines the wind energy installations attached to the office and guarantees that the energy produced by Vestas wind turbines can be injected with full safety and without losses. Furthermore, it improves the performance and productivity of the facilities.

Green Eagle Solutions, a supplier of software solutions for renewable energy companies, has provided a record response to the high demand for quality and safety required by Vestas for the development of its new control centre, adapting to operating procedure P.O.9. An obsolete system has been migrated to a new platform which is more stable and robust, with the main challenge of carrying out this change without interruptions in service. Furthermore, the new platform can be expanded quickly and easily to integrate the facilities of third parties in the short term in Spain, Latin America and South Africa, as well as bringing other technology to the office which may be regulated by the system operator. «Vestas, a global leader in wind energy, bases its activity in the Spanish market mainly around the operation and maintenance service, to continue being a point of reference in the sector.

Thanks to our long experience in the wind energy industry, and the cutting edge products and services that we offer our clients, we can prolong the lifespan of the facilities, maximising the production of clean energy, reducing the cost of electricity for people in Spain and contributing to compliance with European objectives for 2020,» states Alejandro Casquero, Remote Operations Engineer at Vestas. «In this sense, having a new partner control centre for the Control Centre of Renewable Energies of the Spanish Electricity Network was essential for being more efficient and bringing value to operations in our plants and wind turbines.» The new control centre has been possible thanks to the collaboration of the Remote Operations and Service departments of Vestas and the Green Eagle Solutions Engineers. This centre, based on CompactSCADA® Central Energy Control technology, covers the data acquisition, delegate office, monitoring and remote control requirements for connected facilities and machines. Furthermore, it checks whether the production meets forecasts and allows the issue and monitoring of power regulations, in accordance with requirements set out by the Spanish Electricity Network. «We have installed the high availability cluster with the aim of ensuring that the control centre is always connected and available for the Spanish Electricity Network, and thanks to the flexibility of our technology we have quickly adapted the facilities to the P.O.9. regulation,» states Juan Fernández, CTO of Green Eagle Solutions. «The regulation is very demanding because the Spanish Electricity Network has to guarantee the safety and continuity of the electricity supply for the whole country. It is essential to know these specifications and comply with all requirements so that our remote control centre provides the Spanish Electricity network with this management. Thanks to our CompactSCADA® technology we provide a reliable system.» The Vestas control centre allows pertinent information on each facility to be seen in real time, such as weather forecasts and status, communications status and electrical information (active power, real time monitoring of the reactive power control for avoiding losses, voltage, etc.). Likewise, it allows problems to be detected and solved instantly, thanks to the incident notification system, and the direct issue of orders to wind turbines. The new technology also allows the generation of reports on pertinent indicators of the facilities.

Furthermore, thanks to the flexibility of CompactSCADA®, the parks attached to the Vestas control centre are certified for participation in secondary and tertiary regulation, and adjustment facilities. Among the main functionalities of the control centre are the following:

  • Real time operation, supervision and control of the wind farm facilities, with centralised measurement information in real time and every ten minutes, status, and recording of alarms.
  • Delegate Office: Receipt of active and reactive power consignments from the System Operator. Optimisation of the generation and increase in efficiency, applying the restrictions that affect the facility’s generation as little as possible.
  • Management of discharge.
  • Introduction of downtimes in intraday markets to avoid deviations.
  • Analysis of the facility’s performance (machines and SET), proposing specific action plans and monitoring them.
  • Real time monitoring of systems, equipment, processes and communications.
  • Centralised exploitation of all information from facilities through robust, reliable databases (Real Time and Historic). System redundancy and backup.
  • Web interface and systems adapted to mobile devices.
  • Economic estimations based on weather forecasts and market prices published by OMIE.
  • Controlled access to facilities and job monitoring.
  • Generation of reports on pertinent indicators.

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