Wind Energy Technical Library

Wind Energy Overview

Overivew of National Instruments products in the Wind Energy Industry

Case Studies

Wind Energy customer solutions for test, control and monitoring

Technical Tutorials

Technical Documents for different application areas

Application Areas

Overview of each major application area in the Wind Energy Industry

Wind Energy Overview

• Overview Webcast: Essential Technologies for Test, Control, and Monitoring – The following webcast gives a complete overview of National Instruments in the Wind Energy Industry.  It highlights key essential technologies that are driving innovation in all areas of Wind Energy including Test, Control, and Monitoring.  This webcast is approximately 15 min long.
• Resource Kit: Wind Power Resource Kit – The following resource kit contains case studies, technical documents, reference architectures, and whitepapers that pertain to Wind Energy. 

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Technical Tutorials

• Wind Turbine Control Methods – This document explores the fundamental conceptsac and control methods/techniques for wind turbine control systems
• Wind Turbine Condition Monitoring – This document discusses some of the major components of a wind turbine you should monitor and which NI devices you can use to do this
• Power Quality Monitoring and Power Metering Tutorial – This tutorial provides an overview of three phase electricity basics and then discusses three of the most common power quality events: leading/lagging power, saq/swell/interruptions, and harmonics
• Simulating a Wind Turbine – The following architecture demonstrates how to simulate a full wind turbine system, including the wind turbine, mechanical drive train, generator, power grid, and controller

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Case Studies

Acoustic Emissions Testing

• Testing Wind Turbines for Noise Emissions with NI LabVIEW – DELTA used NI products to develop an IEC61400:11 compliant noise emissions test system.

Control System Testing and Design

• Siemens Develops a Dynamic Turbine Simulator for Steam Turbine Controller Examination – Siemens used NI products to create a real-time simulator for steam turbine controller factory acceptance tests.
• NI CompactRIO and PXI for Turbine Speed Controller Simulation and Testing in Power Plants – Laborelec developed a Turbine simulation using NI products to test turbine speed controllers.

Generator and Gearbox Testing and Monitoring

• Rugged Monitoring System for Bearings – FAG Procheck, Bearing Manufacturer, uses NI CompactRIO to develop an on-line machine condition monitoring solution.

Grid Integration and Power Quality Monitoring

• Controlling a Mobile Voltage Dip Generator Using NI PXI – Energy 2 Quality developed a mobile medium-voltage dip generator using one system to record the signals and post process the data for full-scale tests of wind turbines with the capability of closing a circuit breaker on a specific phase angle.
• A LabVIEW-Based Instrumentation system for a Wind-Solar Hybrid Power Station – A Power Quality and voltage monitoring system was designed for a hybrid Wind-Solar power station.

Structural Testing and Monitoring

• Full scale testing of wind turbine blade to failure - Demex and Risø National Laboratory used NI products to monitor a wind turbine blade as it is brought to failure.

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Application Areas

Structural Testing and Monitoring

• Blade Testing
• Blade Monitoring
• Structural Monitoring

Generator and Gearbox Testing and Monitoring

• Machine Acceptance Test
• Online Gearbox Monitoring
• Bearing Fault Detection

Grid Integration and Power Quality Monitoring

• Grid Fault Detection
• Power Quality Monitoring
• Power Factor Correction

Control System Testing and Design

• HIL System Design
• Pitch/Yaw Control
• Field-Oriented Control

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