Collecting and analyzing data from 60 wind farms can make any data mining task daunting. For one aspect of data that gets seen by several areas of the business, Iberdrola Renewables has added PI Event Frames to help bucket these occurrences and start making it easier to analyze implications of these events. Curtailments are a major factor for wind energy producers in the US. Use of PI Event Frames that trigger based off of a PI Attribute (utilizing regular PI Data) has made it possible to quickly draw out more information. By creating PI Event Frames for Curtailments, Iberdrola quickly gets an estimate of power lost during the previous month (or even the last week) whereas before it would take a team and multiple days to get to the same point. While the data still needs to be scrubbed, having the initial information available in near real-time is a huge step forward and we are still finding new ways to utilize the data.
ACE is used to generate the Event Frame, and in doing so some back-end calculations are run as the event frame is created and closed in order to help get expected losses over the time frame. As more people at Iberdrola Renewables start using this, they expect to add monetary calculations in real-time using the pricing data available in the PI System. Currently this information is utilized by the Performance Reporting Group which looks at the costs of curtailments and ensures that Iberdrola is getting paid correctly during these events and the Technical Division which looks for ways to improve overall operational efficiency.
As Event Frames are proving useful, Iberdrola expects to add stoppages to the AF Server.
Speaker
Brandon Lake
Brandon Lake started as a Software Developer in Test in Redmond, Washington. In 2006 he found OSIsoft and after five years of work in Training, Pre-Sales and Partner Management, he transitioned and began his current role as the PI System Manager for Iberdrola Renewables.