Wind farm control

Our unrivalled experience and proven tools put owners in control of their wind farm.

As the technology matures and wind farms get bigger, wind energy is an increasingly mainstream part of the electricity mix. Hence wind power needs to present itself to the grid like a conventional power plant – using the same language, protocols and mind-sets. It is also more important than ever to understand your wind assets, monitor performance and schedule maintenance to ensure you optimize energy output and meet your grid obligations.

DNV's wind farm control services help you meet all these challenges. Completely independent, we approach wind farm control from the owner’s perspective, ensuring your needs are met. You get a partner with unrivalled experience – no other company has undertaken more control design work – who combines wide-ranging expertise with validated wind farm modelling and management tools.

A made-to-measure service
We offer a bespoke service to evaluate the potential benefits and risks of the technology for new and existing sites, and to assess third-party control systems. We can develop an indicative (not for implementation) wind farm control strategy for your site, enabling you to understand the potential energy gains and load impacts. This service covers four key areas:

• Wind farm modelling

The key to effective wind farm control is creating an accurate numerical model. By combining our extensive modelling and computational fluid dynamics capabilities, building on the technology in our widely used modelling tools, such as Bladed and WindFarmer, we create a model that incorporates wake and electrical interactions between turbines. This is validated against real data throughout its use to ensure maximum accuracy.

• Grid control

There is a growing market for so-called grid ancillary services that adapt power in response to dynamic grid requirements. We support you in implementing these services within your wind farm. Drawing on our extensive knowledge of aspects, such as real and reactive power, voltage control, wind turbines and grid requirements allows optimal integration of these features with a unified package.

• Energy optimization

We put full understanding of the potential energy and loads optimization in the hands of the wind farm owner. Our analysis will evaluate how optimizing individual turbine control can manage wake effects, maximize the overall energy capture of your farm, and ensure a long service lifetime.

• Validation

Our powerful simulation tools allow us to predict long-term, site-specific wind farm behaviour based on wind speed statistics. We then use actual site measurements to validate these predictions as well as your wind farm control policies.