EXPERT EYE
The Energy Transition Needs Data to Succeed CEO of Clir Renewables, Gareth Brown, examines the need for a ‘big data’ approach across the US to accelerate the renewable energy transition Written by: Gareth Brown, CEO, Clir Renewables
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S renewable energy is on the cusp of major growth, with rapid buildout of onshore wind and solar underway, and over 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind due to come online by 2030. However, as we have seen in Europe, after a couple of years of operation, problems can start to arise - seemingly out of nowhere - for offshore wind farms. Clearly, these problems have a source. But without a strong data monitoring and analysis strategy in place, these new developments could face ongoing and unnecessary drops in energy production, and therefore revenue. Largely, the ongoing nature of this 8 | North America Outlook issue 04
issue is thanks to an assumptionbased approach to identifying and quantifying the causes of production losses. This article explores the need for US renewable project owners and investors – those looking offshore in particular - to take a ‘big data’ attitude to project performance in order to drive a successful, profitable energy transition.
UNPICKING UNDERPERFORMANCE While the successful buildout of offshore wind farms in Europe provides a valuable lesson for installing projects, the burgeoning US offshore wind industry must also learn from common mistakes and assumptions made by European and North American onshore projects around underperformance once these projects are online. Often, underperformance for the first few years is blamed on a low wind resource, the most common culprit for low production. However, fluctuations in windspeed cannot
account for patterns of year-on-year underperformance – and after several years of lost revenue, owners have started to look through the data to figure out whether they really are just unlucky, or if there’s a deeper problem with the turbines. For example, a sensor error that pitches turbine blades to the wrong degree can cause a dip in annual energy production that will not immediately raise suspicions as it will often be masked by larger, resourcebased fluctuations in production volume. Over the years, however, this small drop in annual energy production could be unnecessarily losing the project owners millions of dollars in revenue. In order for project owners to recognize these small but significant losses and take action to fix them right away, all data from a project must be analyzed in context - from individual turbines to their neighbors in the project and the environment itself. Usually, once a project owner has recognized that underperformance