WIND FARM
TURNING BIG DATA INTO SMART DATA Australia’s latest wind farm includes diagnostic data acquisition technology, providing data that is monitored and analysed continuously to achieve optimal efficiency and asset management for wind farms worldwide.
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ore than 800 sensors strategically positioned on the wind turbines at Australia’s newest wind farm will play a key role in ongoing research by Siemens to optimise performance and minimise the need for potentially costly maintenance. Every rotation of the ninety 3 MW turbines at Snowtown II wind farm is continually monitored off-site to develop key target values that can evaluate potential errors and correct them remotely. It is another example of the state-of-the-art technology incorporated into Australia’s latest renewable resource power plant and demonstrates the engineering expertise available in Australia. “This is a wonderful example of the benefits of continually developing the engineering talent we have here in Australia so they can be part of the exciting work that is going on at a global level,” said Engineers Australia Chief Executive Officer Stephen Durkin.
40 WHAT'S NEW IN PROCESS TECHNOLOGY - FEBRUARY 2015
“It’s another example of how Siemens and Engineers Australia are working together to advance the engineering profession for the benefit of the communities we serve,” Durkin said. Siemens Ltd CEO Jeff Connolly said it also represented a graphic illustration of the transformation of big data into smart data and the move towards a digitalised economy in preparation for the fourth industrial revolution. “The information from Snowtown II is fed to our monitoring centre in Denmark, which collates similar data from Siemens’ wind farms around the globe. Last year the database contained 97 terabytes of data. That will grow to 268 TB by 2015. “Ten years ago it would have taken 1000 years to produce five billion gigabytes of data. Today, we can produce that amount in 10 minutes and the data captured from Snowtown II is part of that growth,” Connolly said.
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