Dong Energy (PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS)

Dong Energy is the largest energy company in Denmark and one of the largest energy companies of Northern Europe providing with the electric power more than 1 million enterprises and households. The company manages 19 thousand km of transmission lines, 10 thousand substations and contains more than 970 thousand connection points. Dong Energy works on a set of projects in the field of thermal power, offshore wind power generation and also on some projects in the oil and gas industry.

The company follows the ambitious development plan for offshore wind power power plants. In 2012 their cumulative installed capacity contained 1.7 GW. By 2020 its increase by 4 times is planned, and it means that in operation there will be about 1800 wind power units. In terms of maintenance such impressive number of turbines requires permanent monitoring of their status, especially in days of sea storm, in light or turbulent breeze and other abnormal and dangerous situations. And this task is one of the most important and difficult for the company.

The second not less important task of the company is increase in profitability of electricity generation from renewable sources. With respect thereto Dong Energy set a strategic objective: reduce cost value of electricity generation to level less than 100 euros for Mvt*ch by 2020.

The third strategic task of Dong Energy is decrease in coefficient of frequency of industrial injuries with loss of working time (LTIF) with 3.6 to 1.5. It should be noted that maintenance of offshore assets is one of the most dangerous work types. It is connected with need of disembarkation of a command on operational and to maintenance from the vessel on the airfield of the wind generator (the photo. 1). For accomplishment of this transaction the crew of the vessel needs to bring it to the wind-driven generator for disembarkation of a repair crew. At a calm such transaction does not constitute big danger, however, when waves reach 2 meters in height, and the vessel begins to be shaken on 4 meters in different directions, attempts to land on the airfield of the wind turbine can pose serious hazard to life of people. Considering that in plans of the company there is a numerical increase in offshore wind power units, the task of decrease in number of industrial injuries very becomes complicated. Besides, it should be noted that work at offshore wind power plants is paid 15 times more expensively, than similar work on coastal installations. Respectively, the company pays for maintenance works of offshore wind turbines in 15 times more, than for similar works on the land. Optimization of these expenses also is in the center of attention of company management.

The essence of maintenance of offshore assets is that at failure detection or failure of the wind turbine its exact geographical coordinates are defined, the failure reason is established, necessary works are performed, and then control tests are carried out.

House keepers of Dong Energy thanks to Esri ArcGIS geographic information system precisely determine coordinates of the necessary turbine. For identification of a cause of failures they use indications of sensors from which data are collected and processed by means of infrastructure of data and events of real time of PI System [1]. For issue of a dress on execution of works to a certain repair crew the module of maintenance and repair of the equipment SAP PM is used.

At the same time information arrives with the different detail level that is also important. The engineers who are responsible for control and check of capacity of turbines use data only of the general character: they read out number of the hours of the electric power developed by each MW installation on the basis of what reports on turbine capacity are formed. Engineers on maintenance of installations need more detailed information on specific parameters and their graphical representation for the analysis of a situation and monitoring of operation of the equipment to and at the time of emergence of accident or any event. Detailed data for identification of origins of emergency situations are required for diagnostic services. Thus, thanks to different operational panels extensive information on technology process becomes available to use production technology to personnel and the management.

In fig. 2 the general architecture of the data streams arriving from wind power plants is provided. The platform of PI System which is responsible for collecting of all data from the sensors installed on turbines is designated by yellow color. Green color is processes for which operational personnel, dispatching service and specialists of technical support are responsible. All of them use instruments of visualization PI Coresight, PI DataLink or PI ProcessBook for viewing and data analysis. Processes of further data analysis and drawing up reports are represented by blue color.

At design of wind power plants, in the course of their construction, during monitoring of technical condition of wind turbines and at their operation, Dong Energy continuously collects data from the touch devices installed on turbines by means of PI System infrastructure. Also there is a wish to note that successful use of the cards created based on the Esri ArcGIS platform [2] was strength of Dong Energy company always. Therefore the idea of integration of the GIS Esri ArcGIS and infrastructure of the real-time data PI System of OSIsoft company assuming the premises of real-time data in a geographical context was approved by company management of Dong Energy.

In the project of integration the product of the company OSIsoft, PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS which solves directly a problem of data integration of real time with space data and besides provides synchronization of a data model between base of geodata ArcGIS and infrastructure of PI System (fig. 3) is used.

After integration of systems data from sensors come to ArcGIS for their further display by the Esri ArcGIS tools: from desktop applications to ArcGIS Online. At the same time the most interesting is application of Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS – the special designer for creation of the operational panels with the built-in card working in real time. The user application is arranged from the configured widgets – the visual components connected with "live" data sources. There are more than ten different widgets submitting films of messages, digital and needle indicators, diagrams and charts.

Users in PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS note parameters and attributes, necessary for their work, which will be displayed afterwards on the card, for example, the power of the wind turbine, codes of errors, wind speed in an upper point of the turbine. Values of the selected parameters become available on the protected Website and are used by the ArcGIS system as an input data stream.

The Esri company developed the product GeoEvent Processor - the processor of geoevents, being the ArcGIS for Server expansion. This product allows Dong Energy to obtain data from different sources and to transform them to the format clear to the Esri systems. At the first stage the source of input data is described. Further GeoEvent Service which will transform forms and distributes the events arriving from a source of input data in the output data and in target elements. The user can carry out monitoring of these data, monitor events in GeoEvent Processor, processing of input data and also the output data.

Output data can be displayed in a graphic type by different methods. For a start the card which is placed on ArcGIS Online is created - it is the cloud solution of Esri for sharing of cards on network giving to the user an opportunity of the choice of a template for creation of cards. The template represents the application which defines a type of the card for the user. For example, the template of the card can represent the operational panel displayed on stationary PCs or mobile devices.

In fig. 4 the example of the card on which the space data reflecting arrangement of Dong Energy wind turbines are applied is provided. State-of-health data of turbines arrive in real time from PI System. One of the main advantages of similar cards is the possibility of simultaneous data mapping from PI System and space data arriving from other systems, for example, in this case specialists of Dong Energy added the data arriving from the system of tracking courts on the card. From the drawing it is visible that at the moment all vessels are in port, at the same time the user has an opportunity to add on the card data on weather, on inflows or otliva, on wave height that he will allow it to find out why all vessels are in port.

On the card the parameters of each turbine updated in real time are provided. The user can mark with red color of the turbine, failed - with the error code other than zero. There is an opportunity to carry out space data analysis: if the practical capacity of the turbine is higher, than at other installations, the icon of this turbine on the card can be increased if below - that it is reduced. It is also possible to notice differences in the generated power of turbines with an identical wind force. In this case through PI Coresight parameters and indicators of the next same turbines are compared and at identification of distinctions origins of faults are established. Access to the same card and to the same information can be provided for all interested users of the company by means of thick or thin clients of ArcGIS. Thus, all interested employees will work together on solution of the problems.

Part of financial strategy of Dong Energy is attraction of additional investments by sale of wind power plants to financial partners on condition of providing to these partners full access to technology data on turbines. Therefore the employees who are engaged in monitoring of capacity of wind generators should make regularly reports for partners of the company (participants of joint ventures). In particular, it is about reports on emergency situations and on sudden falling of performance. Providing these reports to the financial partner is made by means of the PI System tools, data from which are combined with space data. Thus, Dong Energy provides to partners information on technical condition of turbines and on when and what turbine fails.

In the course of implementation of the project of integration of the IT Esri ArcGIS and OSIsoft PI System platforms specialists of Dong Energy actively interacted with all staff of the company, considered the user feedback and defined information which it makes sense to display on operational panels. Creation of operational panels on which the data on number of idle times of turbines which are not eliminated at the moment emergency situations, given on the current performance of wind installations and forecasts are provided was result of interaction with technical services of the company, i.e. with the employees who are engaged in daily maintenance of wind power stations. Further information on arrangement of objects was output to operational panels, i.e. on the card it was visible now what turbines failed and at what power plant. In fig. 5 the failed turbines are marked in red color.

It is also possible to add dynamics of processes in time and through PI Coresight to display parameters of the selected wind generator. Maintenance specialists in Dong Energy actively use this tool, scrolling time on the diagram and analyzing the accidents given till the moment to understand what happened to the turbine (fig. 6).

The combination of space and temporary data allows Dong Energy company to involve actively self-elevating vessels - the ships equipped with the special "legs" allowing it to rest against a seabed and to rise by some height above sea level for works. As a rule, such vessel sets on a bottom of 4-6 big support. It would seem, similar support can be put anywhere, however the problem consists that Dong Energy wind turbines are connected by cables, and it is extremely necessary to know accurately where these cables are laid. For this purpose access to space data that they did not damage cables when working is provided to the crews of vessel which are putting out to sea. For data acquisition about arrangement of cables the Esri platform is used, and information on what cables at the moment are energized, comes from PI System.

Some wind power plants of Dong Energy are located in Great Britain where water at otliva recedes from them. Up-to-date information about inflows and otliva is stored in PI System and considered at work planning during which time frames of maintenance as there is a probability to ground the vessel on the way back should be accurately defined if it is sent to wind turbines at the time of an outflow. It is one more example of work with real-time data in combination with GIS.

In conclusion we will estimate cost efficiency of the executed project. Let's remind that any works in the sea are paid 15 times more expensively, than on the land, and by 2020 the company is going to increase number of wind turbines to 1800 pieces. Thus, reduction of number of unplanned works from four to two in a year on one object will allow to save up to 20 bln. dollars of the USA a year on turbines. Besides, knowing technical condition of turbines, specialists will be able to plan the repair schedule more effectively. Labor safety as the technical Dong Energy commands will be able to go less often to turbines, especially will increase at the same time if it is about works in a storm situation.

In what way will such solution allow to reduce number of exits in the sea? First of all, it should be taken into account that specialists initially have information on routine maintenance and on the planned dresses on execution of works. Data on technical condition of turbines and about emergency situations are added to this information. Thus, it is possible to combine service of several turbines for one run of the vessel.

It is also possible to enter data on guaranty periods of service in ArcGIS, to add information from the passport of the turbine which is used in combination with real-time data now that turns the normal card into "smart" GIS.

So, summing up the results, we will note that a combination of OSIsoft PI System and Esri ArcGIS, the providing opportunity to integrate space data and real-time data, allows Dong Energy to use the uniform tool, one operational panel for access to all necessary information by means of thick and thin clients.

Video of the presentation of representatives of Dong Energy company of Andres Repque and Peter Klemmensen