The value of using TCM^®

Vattenfall purchased the wind power site close to Maltesholm outside Kristianstad in Skåne province in September 2013. The Höge Väg wind farm was Vattenfall’s largest onshore wind farm in the south of Sweden and would consist of 18 wind turbines with a total capacity of up to 38 MW. Siemens Gamesa was selected to be the supplier of wind turbines.

Vattenfall undertook technical due diligence to evaluate the capability of the factory mounted condition monitoring system. It was assessed that Vattenfall’s way of monitoring the condition wind turbine’s was insufficient. Vattenfall wanted to maintain the turbine data in-house to customize the monitoring setup and make the turbine data available for “big data algorithms” in the future. The recommendation was to install the TCM^® solution parallel with the factory mounted condition monitoring system.

This setup gave Vattenfall complete control of the measurement setup. It allowed them to monitor and collect data from day one even though the turbines were under full service and warranty. Vattenfall contracted Siemens Gamesa to install TCM^® while the turbines were under production. The installation was handled as cooperation between Vattenfall, Siemens Gamesa and KK Wind Solutions.

Having the TCM^® solution installed during the produc¬tion of the turbines was most cost-efficient for Vattenfall, making it easier for KK Wind Solutions to prepare the integration.

The final wind turbine was erected in October 2015, and the entire farm was taken over by Vattenfall’s operations department in spring 2016. From here, the TCM^® installation has played an active role in the daily operation of the site.

“We wanted to put ourselves in a position where we would be able to do the monitoring of the turbines in an efficient and centralized way both before and after warranty. We saw the Enterprise Server Software as the most straightforward tool to achieve this goal.” - Mads Kristian Pedersen, Vattenfall Wind Power in SCADA and Data analysis.
 

A centralized fleet overview 
The value of having TCM^® increases with the number of sites and turbines across manufacturers and platforms.

TCM^® adds value by allowing the customer to compare data between different sites and turbines, making it easier to keep an overview of a large fleet of turbines. This enables Vattenfall to maintain an overview of their fleet at all times. It is easy to compare the development of different failure modes and prioritize the actions needed by using the Fault Handling system.

Furthermore, TCM^® makes it pos¬sible for the customer to prepare for taking over the monitoring after the end-of-warranty as it is possible to create your wind turbine history log during warranty.