Customer Success Story: AES Wind Generation
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- ICONICS GENESIS64™
- ICONICS Hyper Historian™
- ICONICS Universal Data Management
Tech Stack
- SCADA
- OPC
- Modbus/TCP
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Automation & Control - Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Renewable Energy
Applicable Functions
- Maintenance
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
AES is an international power company located in North Palm Springs, California. The company specializes in power generation, utilities, and renewable energy. AES is dedicated to providing cleaner and more sustainable ways to create energy, investing in hydro, wind, solar, biomass generation, and carbon offsets as alternatives to traditional fossil fuels. AES Wind Generation, a special division of AES, explores worldwide opportunities for wind energy creation based on more than 25 years of experience in the power industry. They currently manage over 1,700 megawatts of wind capacity across the US, China, and Europe. In 2010, AES Wind Generation initialized a 49 turbine (one megawatt each) wind farm as part of the Mountain View IV Wind Energy Project.
The Challenge
AES Wind Generation, a division of AES, an international power company, was in need of a robust system that could perform calculations in real time from both user input and data coming from the field. They needed a system that could connect via open standard protocols and provide both instantaneous and aggregate data for monitoring and reporting. The company was also looking for a system that could be implemented quickly and efficiently, given the high amount of repetition involved with each unit having identical inputs and outputs. Additionally, they wanted a system that would fit into a virtual machine environment to facilitate backup and recovery in case of a hardware or software failure.
The Solution
AES chose ICONICS GENESIS64™ and Hyper Historian™ as a complete SCADA and Data Historian solution that would connect via open standard protocols and provide both instantaneous and aggregate data for monitoring and reporting. The global aliasing functions in ICONICS software gave AES a great advantage in quickly implementing the 49 turbines, once the first turbine was configured. AES brought all the data sources into OPC via various interfaces, such as the Modbus/TCP so the SCADA suite has a standard source of data. They also commissioned an OPC server to be built by Matrikon to convert the MHI CNET protocol into OPC. ICONICS’ Hyper Historian maintains all data from the turbines at the wind farm as well as overall production data and substation parameters. The ICONICS Universal Data Management, part of GENESIS64 Platform Services, is used to create numerous calculations that feed Hyper Historian and other applications.
Operational Impact
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