Author: Francesco Miceli
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Internal roads optimization: an update
These vacation days I am managing to find time to work on my “automatic wind farm optimization” project.Yesterday I managed to add a new feature to the optimization of wind farm internal roads.In the new version, the algorithm is also able to consider existing roads and “no-go-areas” (areas that cannot be used due to environmental…
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Dobberzin WF
The photos below, stolen from LinkedIn, are from one of the last tenders I worked on. It is of the Dobberzin wind farm, with the Nordex concrete tower installed. Interesting to note how the keystones are assembled and joined together by grouting.
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Wind farm crane pads optimization: a solution with QGIS
QGIS is a great open source GIS software that I often use to display information in various formats (e.g. SHP). It has an interesting number of additional plug-ins that enhance its capabilities. Over this Christmas break I managed to find a few hours and have virtually finished developing a plug in that helps define the…
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Wind farm BoP optimizer
After several years pondering the possibility, I finally decided to try to build an app that automatically optimizes the BoP of wind farms. So, with the help of relatives who kept their children busy during the Christmas vacations and Claud.ia (Anthropic’s artificial intelligence) I began to complete the various elements. The idea is to solve…
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When Do Seismic Loads Actually Matter? A Practical Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) Guide
Most wind farms never need to worry about earthquakes. Here’s how to tell when yours does — and what changes in the design when it does. Wind turbines are already designed for enormous lateral loads. A 4 MW turbine on an 80-metre tower generates overturning moments in the range of 100,000 kNm under extreme wind…
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The BoP Time Schedule: Standard Order of Works, Plausible Durations and Milestone Payments
I went back recently and pulled together a bunch of BoP schedule I could find in my own archive. What surprised me, looking at them all together, was not the diversity but the consistency. The order of works is essentially the same everywhere. The durations cluster in narrow bands once you account for project size….
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Power Factor and Reactive Energy Compensation in Wind Farms
A practical look at why capacitor banks end up in every wind farm substation, and what you need to understand about reactive energy compensation to specify them correctly. If you have been involved in the electrical design of a wind farm substation, maybe you have seen a capacitor bank in the single line diagram. It…
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From Environmental Impact Assessment to Construction
If you see the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a box-ticking exercise sitting between the developer and the permit, something written by environmental consultants, approved by authorities, filed away and forgotten – you should think again. That is a mistake. Every EIA contains a list of commitments, promises the developer makes to the community and…
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Optical Fibre Cables in Wind Farms — A Quick Guide to What Goes in the Trench
A short overview of the fibre optic cables used in wind farm SCADA networks: why they are dielectric, how they are built, and what to look for in a specification. If you have worked on a wind farm, you know that alongside the medium voltage power cables running from each turbine to the substation there…
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Lomas de Taltal
Another interesting video, again stolen on LinkedIn. It is about the wind farm developed by Goldwin in Taltal (the official name I believe is ‘Lomas de Taltal’). The area is especially interesting since it is one of the most extreme deserts in the world – we are in northern Chile, between Atacama and Antofagasta. If…