Data scientists with cloud-based analytics applications and tower-based telemetry can monitor wind turbine life at each instant.
Fremont, CA: Server farms are seemly profoundly critical to the success of wind farms—offshore and otherwise. Data scientists with cloud-based analytics applications and tower-based telemetry can monitor wind turbine life at each instant.
Why analytics, the sciences of calculation and analysis, are critical to the evolution of offshore wind power.
Data Science and Predictive Maintenance
Thanks to computer science and cloud storage advances, wind farm operations will construct dynamic models that cross-reference and compare the impact of wind, temperature, and wear in ways that were impossible ten years ago.
The main challenge of offshore wind is to reduce massive construction costs and avoid expensive equipment failures. Advancements in analytics-driven predictive maintenance would make offshore wind installations better track when key components malfunction and repair them until a costly failure.
This deep dive into data processing rewards twofold: cutting running expenses and showing device designers the best outlooks for higher performance in future generations of towers and turbines. Land-based wind power is now price-competing with traditional electricity sources in many markets. Cautious research would be one of the keys to enabling offshore wind turbines to reach the same degree of success.
Wind-Monitoring Equipment
One lab explores various technologies to help offshore wind operators take benefit of advanced data science. One of their studies has proved that a floating platform can use LIDAR (light detection and range) equipment to monitor offshore wind patterns. The police mainly use the same equipment to nab speeding drivers: directing the laser beam at a specific location and tracking the motion in the area that the light beam attains.
LIDAR is an admirable field measuring technology, but making it operate on water is cost-prohibitive. Hence the good test of a floating LIDAR or FLIDAR prototype a few years ago was welcome news. With analytics, wind farm operators will pleat extra-precise wind calculations into their total operational models, allowing much smarter forecasts about their turbines' lifetime.
