Bedrijfsbeschrijving
Solidwinds
Arnhem
http://www.han.nl/onderzoek/kennismaken/technologie-en-samenleving/lectoraat/
Uwe van Heesch,
Context
HAN, and in particular the affiliated SEECE (Sustainable Electrical Energy Centre of Expertise) are highly qualified institutions in the field of sustainable energy technology. Solidwinds, as a technical consultant for mainly wind energy project developers, seeks assistance during expansion of its services and therefore initiated cooperation with the HAN/SEECE. This cooperation offers students the unique opportunity to gain insight in and contribute to current wind energy technology. Solidwinds benefits from the cooperation by cost reduction and expansion of its network.
The HAN-Solidwinds cooperation consists of development of a well described software program. The whole software development process is devided in two projects, which will both run for half a semester (10 weeks). Total time for the development will take about 1 year. It is well possible that cooperation will continue afterwards, expanding or enhancing features. It is possible that foreign students join mentioned projects groups, therefore project documentation will be completely in English, as well as all coding documentation. Figure 1 represents the project planning scheme.
While wind energy technology and the decentralised electricity production sector as a whole continue to evolve and grow, there is a continuous need for data management and reliable software.
More and more wind energy projects are started from local initiatives. Local energy cooperations are established and projects are owned and developed by these cooperations, without ownership from e.g. a large electricity company. The goal of the energy cooperation is typically to invest (crowdfund!) equity (own capital) by inhabitants of the region, and return profits from the project to the inhabitants as well. In this way, the benefits for the local area as largest stakeholder are much higher than traditional development by a large commercial party would allow.
This change of investment structure causes a need for transparency for all local investors, so mostly local residents, as they all have personal (at least economic) interest in the project, throughout development, build and operation of the project.
Currently existing software is not particularly fit for this specific purpose for a range of reasons; software is developed by a large development company, enabling strictly own projects to be added, software can be too complicated for non-professional users, software is developed by turbine manufacturers allowing only their turbine types to be added and software is often simply too expensive for small-scale early-stage project developers.
Main objective of the software to be developed is to visualize and give clear insight in key performance indicators during both wind measurement campaign(s) and turbine operation, reaching a range of consumers.
During a wind measurement campaign, data related to primarily wind speed and direction is recorded by several possible types of measurement techniques, collected and processed.
During turbine operation, key performance indicators like e.g. real-time production (kW), all time production (MWh), windspeed, and rpm are recorded with an internal data-acquisition system.
Figure 2 illustrates an example of an existing mobile turbine operation app, as operated by Eneco Wind.
Opdracht
During the work in phase 2 (the OOSE project) the basic starting point is the work as delivered during the project of phase 1 (ISE project). Now, the objective consist of creating a responsive website for both mobile and desktop users, visualizing key data during the wind measurement campaign or operation of the turbine(s) of a windpark. The front-end should support the central concepts and functionalities for future “user experience” and “infotainment”. The front-end is supposed to enable functionalities to create a high-quality user experience, that is different from current existing “boring” energy monitoring apps. The data on which visualization is based originate from a central dedicated server.
The specific objective of phase 2 is to access and use the collected data from the database and visualize it in several ways, as to be described. It is emphasized that the clear objective is to enable the link between data from the database and visuals, but not the graphical quality of the visualisation itself. High-end graphics will be added at a later stage, based on the visualisation functionalities created during this phase 2.
A schematic representation of the different functionalities and buildup is illustrated in figure 5.
Data server
The data server is continuously fed with data from the Collector system, preferrably both the filtered and unfiltered data in the “working format”. To start with, the initial server environment (with limited capacity, but sufficient for any closed beta test) could be run from an ordinary (desktop) PC, located at a convenient place for participating students (e.g. at a HAN location). If necessary, Solidwinds can provide for a local (desktop PC) system, for temporary use as a server. Upon completion of the project, a more permanent hardware solution will be adopted at a Solidwinds office to enable maintenance and future upscaling by Solidwinds.
Application
The website will be used by 2 types of users;
Desktop users;
The desktop (a well as mobile-) website will enable the user to receive key-figure (technical) data about the operational park or measurement campaign, like wind speed, wind direction, current electricity production, amount of households fed, amount of avoided emissions, etc. Next to operational data, there will be a functionality for displaying general (“static”) data about the windpark, e.g. of how many turbines it consists, what kind of turbines were built, when it was built and commissioned, who the owners are, etc. Next to “static” data, there must be functionality for adding “dynamic” news items, like e.g. executed maintenance work on the turbine(s) or mast, or exceptional wind conditions, or anything that is worth mentioning to the public.
Mobile users;
At this stage, the mobile website will be just the same as the, fully responsive desktop website, containing the same information, functionality and visuals.
(At a future stage, not being part of this project, the mobile application will be offered for download as an “app”, for Android/IOS/Windows. A large part of the future users are not particularly used to mobile browsing to websites, so an easy “clickable” app is a true improvement for their user experience. )
Considering the intended future launch of an official mobile app, it is recommended to code the application in best supporting language to this purpose, as selected language must enable transferring the website to a mobile app store. This will save a considerable amount of time in any further future development.
Critical success factors phase 2
Critical success factors differ from the objectives in the sense that they are supposed to be minimally achieved. The work can be split-up in 2 groups: A and B. CSF’s are defined by:
Integration of SCADA-data (turbine production data) import into the database, by a direct connection to the SCADA-system. (GROUP A)
(Official standards exist for wind energy related communication protocols, Solidwinds will try to obtain approval for setting up a real-life data connection with an operational wind turbine, or park. This topic was postponed during phase 1, but is part of negotiations with launching customers.)Integration of measurement data from a Campbell Scientific brand datalogger (of measurement mast) into the database. Example file is available. (GROUP B)
(This data format (.csv) was not yet submitted during phase 1, as contact with a launching customer took place after completion of phase 1.)
Basic “quick look” visualization of (near real-time) wind speed and wind direction. Wind speed (numerical value) must be expressed both in si-units (m/s) as in Beaufort scale (wind force) via a simple conversion. Wind direction must be expressed as a basic wind rose. For operational turbines the current park production (kW) is also displayed. (GROUP A+B)
Basic graphs visualization of data: graphs for day, week, month and year, containing wind speed (for measurement mast) and wind speed and production (kW) (for operational turbines). (GROUP A+B)
Functionality to display cumulative turbine production (all time production) next to current production, and to display simple “equivalent values” for e.g. the number of households currently fed with electricity and/or the (cumulative) amount of avoided CO2 emission, equivalent number of car-kilometers, equivalent number of tree-growth years, etc.
(GROUP A)
Current and cumulative “virtual production” of future (yet to be installed) turbines (from a measurement mast), based on measured (and time-interval averaged) wind speeds and wind directions. “Virtual park production” is determined based on pre-calculated (indicational) production values that are documented in e.g. a lookup table (matrix) for discrete (binned) wind speeds and directions. (GROUP B)
(Every averaged wind speed and wind direction corresponds to a discrete park production. Note that basically only wind speeds and directions are stored in the database, so in order to determine cumulative “virtual production”, calculated intermediate productions should be stored (in the database?) as well and then simply summed later on, or the cumulative production should be determined by lookup and summation of all separate time-interval productions from start. This is a nice and challenging subjects, which will ask some creativity.)
Keywords
- Java
- Mobile app