UpWind Solutions announced that it has signed a multi-site service contract with Berkshire Hathaway Energy and its subsidiaries MidAmerican Energy Co. and PacifiCorp. The agreement is to provide maintenance services for 1.75 GW of GE 1.5 S & SLE turbines across 15 sites located in Iowa, Wyoming, and Oregon. “MidAmerican Energy continues to expand our…

Wind Measurements in Front of the Rotor with iSpin: Higher Yield, Lower Loads, Better Insights The iSpin technology at the spinner allows owners to accurately measure the most important input parameter of wind turbine operation: the wind speed and direction. This allows operators to determine undetected yaw misalignment. After correcting the yaw misalignment, owners can…

Smart Blade recently completed a report that shows its methodology used to determine the final result of a 2.5% increase in AEP from the VG Solution specifically installed on Suzlon S88 turbines. Key lessons: Actual AEP increase from VG installation AEP calculation methodology Power vs Power approach Computation of relative yield differences Over the past 3…

Last week SkySpecs was awarded a 333 exemption – the only type of clearance that authorizes companies to legally fly drones in the U.S. This FAA Exemption allows SkySpecs to fly an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with its proprietary collision-avoidance technology called Guardian to visually inspect and photograph wind turbines. “This is new ground. We are so…

Heath Pratt / Manager of SCADA Services / Upwind Solutions / www.upwindsolutions.com A wind farm typically has several OEM servers operating as a real-time SCADA, database, and remote-access servers. These take up substantial space and require a lot of manpower to ensure peak performance. Some servers at aging wind farms may be close to or…

A wind park typically uses several OEM servers, one working as a real-time SCADA server, another as a database server, and often a third as a remote-access server, all of which take up substantial space and require a lot of manpower to keep running at peak performance. If one goes down, the wind farm owner…

This article comes from Upwind Solutions and is written by Heath Pratt, Manager of SCADA Services at the company. Server virtualization is the masking of server resources, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. The server administrator uses a software to divide a physical server into…

UpWind Solution will install its Vortex Generator (VG) technology on 300 turbines owned by EDP Renewables. EDP Renewables Executive Vice President of Asset Operations, Brian Hayes, stated “Extensive trials on many projects and turbine types over several years have clearly demonstrated the value of vortex generators and we’re proceeding with installation at a number of our…

UpWind Solutions builds their performance engineering team by adding AnneMarie Graves who brings 11 years of experience assessing performance and reliability of wind projects. She is the new director of performance engineering and will be directly involved in helping UpWind analyze their +3 GW fleet of O&M projects in order to reduce cost, increase production,…

Not long ago, the wind-turbine service company UpWind Solutions asked the consulting firm DNV GL to benchmark it on nine key areas. The areas include O&M general service, availability, parts procurement & inventory, safety & quality, turbine experience, supplemental offerings, engineering & technical, organizational, and financial service. You many ask: Why these? So did we.…

Compared to long-established industries such as oil and gas, windpower is a young venture. Many of its leaders, however, come from more mature fields. In their new wind-industry roles, they’ve brought with them – to varying degrees – safety-first work processes. The incident reporting funnel, for example, which brings accidents experienced in the field to…

UpWind Solutions has signed a contract to install its Vortex Generator (VG) technology on the 67, 1.5 MW GE SLE wind turbines at the Armenia Mountain Wind Farm in Pennsylvania owned by AES. UpWind says VGs are a cost effective upgrade that improves the cross flow on wind turbine blades, resulting in more efficient energy production for…

ZF Services, LLC, the strategic aftermarket business unit of ZF Friedrichshafen AG in North America, is pleased to announce the signing of Upwind Solutions to their Authorized Service Provider network. Upwind Solutions, out of San Diego, CA, is the latest addition to the network of authorized dealers which permits them to perform field repair on…

Not all maintenance is reliability centered. For starters, consider that there are at least three types of maintenance, says John Ugland, the manager of performance engineering with UpWind Solutions: reactive, preventive, and proactive. Proactive ideas, the RCM foundation, suggest tasks that would avoid serious failure. RCM is a mindset with risk assessments that become a…

This summary lists the key finding for the case study conducted by UpWind Solutions regarding the effectiveness of vortex generators, devices that keep airflow attached to a turbine blades, and hence boost a turbine’s output. The url to the complete study is available on their hompage. UpWind Solutions partnered with SMART BLADE to study the…

John Ugland, Manager of Performance Engineering, UpWind Solutions, www.upwindsolutions.com “A reliability-centered maintenance program includes only those tasks which satisfy the criteria for both applicability and effectiveness. The applicability of a task is determined by the characteristics of the item, and its effectiveness is defined in terms of the consequences the task is designed to prevent.”…

UpWind Solutions & SMART BLADE have joined forces with 3M to deliver the best-in-class aerodynamic enhancements for wind turbine rotor blades. UpWind Solutions, Inc., the wind industry’s most comprehensive operations and maintenance (O&M) independent service provider, along with SMART BLADE, wind industry aerodynamic experts, announced they have partnered with 3M to deliver the best-in-class Vortex…

UpWind Sentinel, a recently launched drive train health monitoring solution has been chosen by CIRI for their GE 1.6 MW turbines at the Fire Island Wind Farm in Alaska based on its cutting edge technology, user friendly interface, and overall value. UpWind Solutions, Inc., the wind industry’s most comprehensive operations and maintenance (O&M) independent service…

There’s good news and not-so good news from the recent AWEA WINDPOWER 2013 conference in Chicago. The not-so good news is that the crowds and exhibition floor were smaller than in past events. The good news, however, is that most of the right people were in attendance and perhaps better than that, the companies that…

UpWind Solutions, Inc. is a wind industry third-party provider of asset management operations and maintenance services (O&M) with 2.5+ GW in their fleet. In April, they joined the UN’s voluntary corporate citizenship initiative Global Compact to help maintain high standards for social responsibility while positioning themselves on a global scale. UpWind supports the 10 principles…