Control system for a new renewable wave power production farm Johan Musch Valmet Automation Finland Mikael Martikainen AW-Energy Finland Juha-Pekka Jalkanen Valmet Automation Finland

摘要

A Finnish company AW-Energy has invented a new technology called WaveRoller?. Its success story began when a diver was exploring a shipwreck. The idea of utilizing back and forth movement of a shipwreck in power production was born. Currently, a wave farm consisting of three WaveRollers? is in use in Portugal. The energy is transferred via a subsea cable to the national grid. The WaveRoller? installed at a Portuguese pilot 300 kW demonstration power plant has received independent performance verification based on a study conducted by the technical advisory to the renewable energy industry, DNV GL. Converting energy from waves and supplying it directly to the public electrical network needs very fast and complicated control algorithms. Identifying and meeting the challenges in the underwater environment is a good starting point for efficiently operating with minimized service requirements. The control room in Portugal is unmanned, and AW-Energy is using a remote connection from Finland. The performance of the delivered control system has enabled the fine-tuning of the control program to its utmost. Furthermore, included information system constantly follows and analyzes the prevailing wave conditions. Valmets’ experience with hydraulics, coupled with control expertise, was essential to the success of the project. Since the project is implemented on the bottom of the ocean, compliance with precise safety requirements is needed to protect the equipment from salt fog, air moisture and other factors. There are cables connecting the control room on the coast and to the WaveRoller? unit in the sea. The process stations and I/Os are located at the bottom of the sea. The operational redundancy guarantees that the whole system will operate, even in critical circumstances. All necessary data on the display is sent via Ethernet route to AW-Energy office in Finland.