Wind Farm Development, Design, Operation and Maintenance

After participating in this course, you will be able to:

• Identify the necessary steps for developing a wind farm
• Conduct an economic feasibility analysis
• Generate a cost estimate for your wind power plant
• Realize the uncertainties and financial risks in a wind energy project
• Avoid the financial pitfalls due to overestimation or miscalculations
• Increase the efficiency of operating and maintaining your power plant

Description
Wind energy is one of the two growing renewable energy industries. Each year, many new wind farms are developed all over the world. Canada has tremendous wind energy resources that have the potential to be utilized for generating electric power. Presently we have more than 300 wind farms in Canada with over 18.2 GW capacity, but a massive wind energy potential to exploit, expected to reach 27.75 GW by 2029.

This workshop covers all aspects of wind power generation and wind farm development, including resource assessment, selection of technology, calculation of daily and yearly production, environmental concerns, financing evaluation & risk assessment, system operation, and preventive maintenance.

Who Should Attend
Wind Farm Project Developers • Planners & Power Producers • Utilities Personnel involved in Wind Farm Operations • Consulting Engineers • Energy Consultants • Constructors • Wind Farm Equipment & Component Vendors • Environmental, Regulatory, Legal & Insurance Personnel • Operations & Maintenance Personnel of Existing Plants • Managers & Technical Staff from companies intending to step into renewable energy

Day I

Welcome, Introduction, Workshop Preview, Learning Outcomes, and Assessment Method

Wind is a Viable Source of Energy

• Electric energy demand in the world
• Wind energy as a growing industry
• Progress in wind turbine size/capacity

Modern Wind Turbines

• Review and discussion of various components of today’s wind turbines

Wind Resource Assessment

• Energy in the wind
• Wind characteristics and wind variation
• Energy harness estimation
• Wind atlas

Fundamentals and Turbine Types

• Effect of wind on blades
• Blade form and structure
• Force, torque, and power relations
• Turbine types
• Turbine behaviour under various wind speeds and operating rotational speed

Electricity and Electric Generators

• Three-phase AC systems, voltage and frequency
• AC Power: apparent power, active power, reactive power, and power factor
• Principles of electric machines (motors and generators)
• Connection to grid requirements
• Types of generators

Wind Turbine Characteristics and Turbine Selection

• Turbine characteristic curves
• Matching generator to turbine
• Power curve
• Mode of operation of wind turbines
• Types of generators, Cont’d
• Classes of wind turbines

Day II

Energy Yield and Financial Considerations

• Daily and yearly energy yield calculations (examples)
• Effects of turbine mismatch and effect of turbines on each other in a wind farm (example)

Wind Forecasting and Project Assessment

• Forecasting time horizon
• Wind speed prediction methods (introduction)
• Time-series based methods
• Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) method
• Statistical based methods
• Wind Power Forecasting (WPF)
• Energy yield prediction and uncertainties
• Risk Assessment, application of probability data,
• Definition and application of P-50, P-90, P-99 and DSCR

Siting and Wind Farm Design

• Wind farm siting
• Turbine layout
• Micro sitting
• Wake loss

Power Purchase Agreements, Transmission Access, and Interconnection

• General terms of power purchase/sale agreements including price negotiation
• Ownership of environmental credits
• Production guarantee
• Commercial operation commitments
• Open Access Transmission Tariff (OATT)

Day III

Environmental Effects and Concerns

• Wind turbines and the environment
• Wind turbine icing
• Noise and shadow flicker
• Birds and bats
• Effect on communication
• Environmental impact assessment
• Environmental approvals

Wind Farm Operations and Maintenance

• Cost of Maintenance
• Preventive maintenance
• A successful monitoring program to reduce low performance and downtime
• Predicting gearbox failures
• Failure of other components
• Vibration
• Measurements of temperature and other parameters indicative of wind turbine reduction in performance
• Critical diagnostic data needed for quick root cause analysis
• SCADA
• Post-warranty service requirements

Experience Exchange
The instructor will lead a discussion on operations and maintenance. Participants will share their experiences of problems and the solutions that worked. Participants may also introduce problems for which they are looking for solutions.

Questions and Answers, Feedback on Achievement of Learning Outcomes