Company Profile
In 2002 the
Dundalk Institute of Technology established The Centre for Renewable
Energy, a research unit within the college campus. The manager of the
centre, Mr Lawrence Staudt has been involved with renewable energy since
1978 in both Europe and the USA. The aim of the centre is to assist with
Ireland’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, through
research, academic programmes and information dissemination. The centre
awarded a contract to Vestas Celtic Wind Technology to erect a wind
turbine on the campus and the project was completed in August 2005.
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The turbine
is rated at 850 kilowatts, and provides over half of DkIT’s
electricity needs, with the rest coming from the national grid.
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The average
power output over the year is approximately 250 kilowatts
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Any excess
electricity is sold to the electricity company, Airtricity.
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The turbine
stands 60 metre tall, with each blade length at 26m.
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It is the
first large “urban turbine” in Ireland
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It is the
first turbine in Ireland to produce electricity for use “on site”.
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It is the
first large turbine on a college campus anywhere in the world.
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The total
cost was €1m.
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The turbine
will pay for itself in five years, through reduced electricity bills
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It will
reduce national CO2 emissions by over one thousand tonnes annually,
saving the country about €25,000 in emissions penalties annually.
Situation
While Vestas
provide systems for monitoring large wind farms, there was no cost
effective solution for monitoring a single wind turbine. In addition the
Centre for Renewable Energy was looking for an extensible monitoring
system which could monitor future projects such as wood chip burners.
Solution
Measuresoft
developed a solution to interrogate the web server embedded in the wind
turbine using an XML protocol. Measuresoft used a secure VPN over the
college network to access the turbine. Measuresoft ScadaPro product
records the data every 12 seconds in an Access database on a PC in the
offices of the Centre for Renewable Energy. A set of web pages (see
below) to allow other college personnel to view the current and
historical performance of the date were also provided.
Benefits
The system can
be extended to monitor new projects being developed by the Centre for
Renewable Energy.
The turbine’s
current and past performance can be monitored across the campus via a
web interface.
The turbine data
is permanently archived so that historical turbine performance can be
used in MSc projects for example.
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