How good is your pitch?

An O2O Wind member posted a challenge named “How good is your pitch?” in which he had a detailed description on their current issues on this topic and then served several questions on revenue losses due to poor pitch settings.

Inspired by this very well written challenge we then organised a Monthly O2O WIND Webinar with the same headline. 

The webinar was introduced by one of our members who shared their specific challenges on the topic.

The suggested agenda for these owner-to-owner discussions looked as follows:

• How can I check for possible poor pitch settings – which methods are being used – from calibrate pitch and yaw from photographs from the ground to the more sophisticated mechanical tuning
• How much control does an owner have when it comes to adjust parameter settings to follow the generated pitch profile for the specific turbine on the specific site?
• Which different strategies can an owner apply to steer pitch and yaw controls to optimise utilisation of the wind
• Which accessible methods does an owner have to improve aerodynamics on their blades
• What would be the best approach for the active owner to ensure that pitch and yaw is optimised for their turbines
• How much do we loose with just one degree error on one blade?
• What is statistically the proportion of error we can expect in a given population of turbines?
• Where is the break even for our efforts – how accurate can the setting be?
• How to include pitch control verification during periodical maintenance
• Conclusion where should an owner focus to have increased power output from blades – pitch, jaw and aerodynamics

It all comes out as a very valuable document

At O2O Wind we have developed the format of our webinars to become a very valuable:

1. First we got the simple idea to organise webinars,
2. then we got the idea to make it mandatory for each participant to share their top challenge within the given topic for the webinar – to build a good foundation for discussions and
3. then we got the idea to create a questionnaire based on the participant’s top challenges and to let them give input on each other challenges.

For the last step we explain to the owners that only those who will put some effort into answering will be sent the summary. This has created a great response rate.

Image how valuable:

• You spend one hour only among genuine wind asset owner peers to discuss a specific theme also introduced by one of the o2o wind members.

• Two weeks later you receive a summary where you (for this specific webinar) can read your own top challenge at the top of a document and thereunder suggested actions from 19 peers working for other wind farm owner across the world.

• Furthermore you can read their top challenges also with 19 suggestions from their peers to be found underneath.

For obvious reasons we cannot share this summary. But we ¨can serve you a downsized version that has been made completely anonymous. Furthermore we have also removed all mentions of turbine makes, suppliers, consultants and any brands. Removing this has made some challenges and input rather thin and these have then been removed completely.

The material is provided “as is”, and O2OWind International assumes no responsibility whatsoever for it use or correctness.

If you wish to receive an invitation to come on-board at O2O WIND and also get access to all our webinars, checklists and most valuable of all – our very active and simple Q&A, please click Here to access our calendars for a live viewing of the actual sharing between your peers.