Some of the largest wind turbine owners in the world announced today the launch of a new breakthrough data sharing program. For the first time in the wind industry, turbine owners around the world will securely and openly exchange operational performance data, enabling them to reduce their data dependency to OEMs, improve analytics and develop a transparent global performance benchmark.
The key objective of the project is to unlock operational insights and to create an operational turbine performance baseline. Enel, Engie and Equinor have confirmed their participation to the project and committed to sharing data from over 10.000 turbines both onshore and offshore. The program is open to any turbine owner, and a significant number of companies are expected to join the project in the coming months. A series of seminars will take place at the beginning of 2021 to enable any interested party to assess opportunities and coordinate platform development efforts.
“This is a truly ambitious program that will put an end to the OEMs superior position with regards to global performance data. As it is today, only the OEMs can fully harvest the benefits of data analytics and benchmarking, which puts asset owners at a disadvantage.” said Mårten Nilsson, CEO of O2OWIND and coordinator of the project. “With this data-sharing collaboration, we are creating a baseline that OEMs always have to relate to. Since the strength of the baseline will be correlated to the amount of data that feeds our models, we strongly encourage all asset owners to attend the information seminars and join this exciting initiative”, he continued
“This data sharing initiative is ground-breaking and an excellent opportunity for cross-industry win-win collaboration”, explained Thierry Kalfon, Managing Director Renewables Global Business Line at ENGIE. “We are convinced of the value of data and analytics to improve operational performance. Because in data analytics the quality of the results depends on the quantity of data available, we strongly believe that sharing data between peers will benefit all of us.”, he said.
By exchanging data on tens of thousands of operating turbines worldwide, leading wind asset owners will be able to turn insights into tangible advantages, such as improving wind farm operations, as well as improving the success rate of claims related to lower than expected power production.
Even the largest owners, operating close to 15GW of wind assets, need all the data they can get to unlock operational insights, as it is explained by José Alba, Head of Global O&M Wind and Storage at Enel Green Power: “We have a specific objective when we manage data, which consists in converting them to the greatest extent into useful information, allowing us to develop our own models for asset management. In order to carry out this strategy, we need the greatest possible amount of data, which we will acquire by joining this initiative”, he said.
According to Sverre Trollnes, Head of Asset management at Equinor, this initiative is particularly relevant in the offshore industry. “Considering the short production series of turbines within offshore wind, sharing data among owners is a necessity to gain better control. We see the O2O Data Sharing Initiative as a new tool to constantly improve our operation, by enabling our lead engineers to exchange with their peers and establish these much needed operational baselines”, he explained.
The complete legal framework of the program, along with detailed technical description for which data are to be shared, and the complete exchange process will be presented at the upcoming industry seminar.
