DNV GL’s new Turbine.Architect software quantifies the technical impact of new turbine designs and components.
DNV GL, the world’s largest resource of independent energy experts and certification body, recently unveiled new software for turbines and wind farms. The Turbine.Architect tool helps to reduce the product development time and costs of wind turbines by using integrated algorithms based on decades of design experience.
The Turbine.Architect software enables engineers and component developers to quickly assess the impact of new designs on a turbine and a wind farm. It does so by calculating the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and production based on realistic project and site specifications.
Turbine.Architect quantifies the technical impact of design and component technology for a turbine system and an entire wind farm, including the foundation and the electrical infrastructure.
The tool can compute realistic values for the capital costs of:
- A turbine
- The Balance-of-Plant components
- The wind-farm operational costs and availability
- The annual energy production
Turbine.Architect’s validated engineering models produce concept-level technical specifications for turbine components and wind farms. It can also provide up-to-date market intelligence by translating these specifications into appropriate capital costs. Operational costs and availability are also quantified using O&M models that are benchmarked with real field data.
Turbine.Architect’s method to estimate energy production includes losses from rotor aerodynamics, drivetrain components, and farm wakes — the latter of which is done by linking with DNV GL WindFarmer software. Turbine.Architect also contains a discounted cash-flow model where estimated costs and yield are escalated to LCOE and Net Present Value (NPV).
DNV GL’s turbine design experts built the tool on the basis of algorithms and many years’ worth of analysis and development. Turbine.Architect can offer quick LCOE calculations during the early phases of a project and lets users overwrite certain components in favor of results from other tools or analysis.
The user can perform high-level screening of potential turbine design projects or do a detailed assessment of a specific system or component. The flexibility of the tool also lets users test various cost-reduction opportunities and perform sensitivity analysis with the overarching objective of supporting an LCOE-driven design process.
“Turbine.Architect has been created by our experts to reduce the risk when designing wind turbines. Not only does it save a great deal of time, producing a concept design in a matter of minutes rather than days, it also offers a means for those without the time or necessary expertise to still forge ahead in the industry,” said Ben Hendriks, Head of Section Engineering at DNV GL.
The tool recently supported an undisclosed supplier of turbine blades and helped steer the development forward toward larger LCOE gains. The short times needed to set-up, run, and analyze the results proved instrumental; it allowed
DNV GL was able to work alongside this customer and provide inputs because Turbine.Architect’s set-up, run time, and analysis were quick and simple. Its holistic analysis provided engineering facts to debunk some lingering opinions that might have resulted in a sub-optimal technology. The end result: an advanced blade concept with the right balance between cost, mass, load, and aerodynamic efficiency.
“By offering LCOE-driven design support, we are able to guarantee our customers an improved final result to their project: a faster time-to-market with a more competitive product,” said Hendriks. “By using Turbine.Architect in all design stages of a project, a component designer can play around with various elements, allowing them the freedom to swiftly trial different ideas. What’s more, we are offering this service to all OEMs & suppliers of key components – whether they are already a DNV GL customer or not.”
DNV GL will launch the new tool with a live demonstration EWEA in Paris on November 18 (visit Booth H04 at 12noon).
DNV GL
www.dnvgl.com
Filed Under: News, Software
Interesting, but hardly new. Other consultancies have had tools to do this for years and the OEMs already have this capability in-house. The real value added capability these days is a BOM cost optimization tool enabled by a sub-component price index.