Wind Farms Sensorial Data Acquisition and Processing

In this chapter is introduced the issues involved in the Wind Farms Sensorial Data Acquisition and Processing. This chapter is organized in five sub chapters summarized afterwards. The first sub chapter is the introduction. The second sub chapter makes an overview of a wind maintenance system, describing in detail the software related to the acquisition system, the information system and other software. This sub chapter explains also the operation of the acquisition system, including algorithms, hardware and firmware details. The third sub chapter deals with algorithms that manage the results of a methodology presented in the second sub chapter, with the objective to illustrate the operation of the system. The penultimate sub chapter will present results including simulation and real operation of the system, data details for clock synchronization protocols with improved changes, acquisition time and a SVM (Support Vector Machines) classifier applied to sensorial wind data. Finally we will make the chapter conclusions and present the references used in this chapter. The contribution of this chapter is in the design of the architecture proposed with emphasis for synchronous data acquisition in different geographic points. An improvement for PTP (Precision Time Protocol) is included to achieve fast time convergence in the initial phase of a clock synchronization setup. The control and setup of acquisition timings also play an important role in the system behaviour. This chapter also includes different alternatives for this subject. Given the current energy framework and global climate change, the emphasis on renewable energy has grown a lot. One of the most important renewable energies is from wind that has given great contribution for this new paradigm. There are, however, many aspects that must be considered and are related to its framework as an energy environmentally friendly. This growth in wind farms has the effect of the increase in diversity of the type of equipment in wind turbines. Moreover, the average life of each wind generator and readiness of this kind of technology means that there is a legacy of equipments for different ages and maintenance needs. An information system for maintenance, called SMIT (Terology Integrated Modular System) is used as a general base to manage the assets and for the strategic lines to the evolution of