Spica Technology has since autumn 2020 worked on a project in Fitou, France towards optimizing and retrofitting 9 x Nordex N60 (1,3 MW) wind turbines. The project has now been finalized.

When Spica Technology won the tender in 2020, the wind farm owner’s main objective was to develop an automatic acoustic regulation plan in the software of the turbines, that would increase their availability. At the current scenario all turbines were to be shut down manually at certain wind directions, due to noise complaints from a nearby village. A process that imposed unnecessary loss in production, due to that the owner fully depended on manual service from technicians every time the turbines had to be shut down and turned back on, leading to that the average availability of the wind farm was down to almost 20 %. The solution of an automatic regulation plan, however, could not be installed on the current controller solution, as it was outdated and therefore required an optimized controller solution, which was delivered through our retrofit controller solution.

The first proof of concept was installed in October 2020 on one of the turbines, to collect data and show that the solution was able to increase availability over the next 6 months. The proof of concept consisted of the Spica Retrofit Controller combined with ultrasonic sensors and an individual acoustic regulation plan, installed in the software of the turbine. The solution quickly proved that availability could be increased drastically from around 20 % up to 40 %, which led the way for installing the solution on the remaining eight turbines, which now have has been finalized.

Want to know more about our retrofit solution, read more here: https://spicatech.dk/custom-wind-turbine-control-systems/retrofit/