Wind farm performance assessment¶
Tipspeed assesses an operating wind farm by comparing the measured production of each turbine with its expected production in each 10-minute period. The result is summarised by the performance ratio and broken down in the energy waterfall.
Causes of a production shortfall¶
The production of a wind farm can fall short of plan for three distinct reasons:
- Wind and wakes: the wind of the period was below the long-term climate, or turbines were waked by their neighbours or by a nearby wind farm.
- Availability: turbines were stopped, derated or curtailed.
- Performance: turbines were running but produced less than expected for the wind they received.
Only the third reason constitutes underperformance.
Tipspeed distinguishes the three by comparing the measured production of each turbine with the expected production of a physics-based digital twin, on 10-minute time series.
In this section¶
- Performance ratio: the main indicator, defined as production at 100% availability divided by expected production after wakes.
- Reading the energy waterfall: the steps from the long-term production, or the energy budget, to measured production.
Related sections:
- Digital twin: construction of the expected production.
- Analytics methods: the root cause of each gap (yaw misalignment, power curves, lost production).
- Metrics glossary: definitions of all metrics.