Cennergi turns wind into megawatts with help from Wonderware
POWER & GAS UTILITIES
Goals
- Centralised but remote view into wind farms’ performance
- User-driven and derived reports for a wide audience
- Exchange of data with other applications
- Ability to deliver reports to multiple devices
- Provide notifications on underperforming or failed assets
Challenges
- Coping with different systems and disparate sources of data
- Ensuring the integrity of data links between the wind farms and head office
Results
- Ease of data analyses
- Reporting from a central point
- “Out-of-the-box” solution ensures software longevity
- Mayor benefit of configuration over customisation
- System versatility and scalability will cope with future demands
Solutions & Products
- System Platform
- Application Server
- Device Integration
- Historian
- MES Performance
- Flow Software

Solution selection and implementation
Cennergi selected system integrator Control Systems Integration (CSI) for the project who, in turn, chose a suite of Wonderware solutions for the implementation.
“Wonderware’s System Platform provides a global solution where everything such as development and the deployment of changes and updates can be managed centrally,” says Jos Peters, Systems Engineer, CSI. “System Platform also allows for the modelling of the entire system within the organisational structure while at the same time facilitating integration with the various wind farm control systems with the help of Wonderware Device Integration and Top Server from Software Toolbox.”

The loss of data between the remote sites and head office was always going to be a consideration but the store-forward capability of Wonderware’s Historian ensured data integrity and availability – if a little delayed in the event of connection failure. Win-911’s default System Platform connection would ensure that important notifications such as turbine failure would be delivered without delay.
One of the major components of the new system was the inclusion of Flow Software which would allow for the aggregation of data into “time buckets”, the validation of manually-entered data and user-defined reports.
“The reports provide all the key information for all 87 turbines and their 14 collectors across both sites,” says Peters. “The reports are in three categories namely the production reports which compare actual to projected targets, the performance reports which illustrate the up and down times of all turbines and the wind reports which show wind speed and direction. We provide for tabular and time-series reports as well as the automatic updating of composite dashboards. Lastly, the e-mail functionality of Win-911 is used to notify relevant personnel of problems on any turbine.”