CEE Group presents innovative software for its wind turbine components

The asset man­ag­er CEE has tak­en a fur­ther step towards dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. The Ham­burg-based com­pa­ny has teamed up with part­ners to devel­op a data­base con­tain­ing a large num­ber of rel­e­vant com­po­nent specifics of more than 130 wind tur­bines. The soft­ware will be unveiled to the pub­lic for the first time at the Wind Ener­gy Days in Lin­stow.

 CEE oper­ates wind tur­bines in Ger­many and France with a total capac­i­ty of about 370 megawatts. Frank Grafe, Direc­tor, explains: “Our goal as asset man­ag­er is to min­imise risk and opti­mise yields. With a track record stretch­ing back more than 15 years, we have a broad based port­fo­lio of more than 130 tur­bines. Each make has its own spe­cial fea­tures which it is well worth becom­ing acquaint­ed with.”

Faults deter­mined in expert reports and by sight inspec­tions and main­te­nance work, for exam­ple, are doc­u­ment­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly in the data­base. As a result, the life­time file can be updat­ed and main­tained with­out any fur­ther effort. The com­po­nent data­base also enables CEE to draw up opti­mised, cus­tomised ser­vice plans for each tur­bine. The ben­e­fits are a reduc­tion in tur­bine down­times and longer life­times.

The inno­v­a­tive approach of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly clas­si­fy­ing all tur­bine com­po­nents under the con­trol of CEE in order to link and eval­u­ate the infor­ma­tion and offer options for action took fur­ther shape in the autumn of 2018 when it entered into a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with soft­En­er­gy GmbH, 8.2 Obst und Ziehmann GmbH and wind­ex­perts Prüfge­sellschaft mbH.

 More­over, accord­ing to Frank Grafe this step ful­ly reflects CEE’s val­ues. “As a long-term investor and oper­a­tor of renew­able ener­gy plants, we always work close­ly with our coop­er­a­tion part­ners.”

 The cen­tralised record­ing of com­po­nent defects by all par­ties is essen­tial for the effi­cient oper­a­tion of tur­bines. Ini­tial­ly, it was nec­es­sary to auto­mate and har­monise the record­ing of all infor­ma­tion from expert reports, sight inspec­tions and main­te­nance work. “Using the wind ener­gy infor­ma­tion sys­tem, we were able to make sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings in doc­u­ment­ing defects and thus cre­ate the basis for fur­ther com­po­nent eval­u­a­tions,” adds Thomas Nies­taedt, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of soft­En­er­gy GmbH.

As a long-stand­ing part­ner of CEE, wind­ex­perts car­ries out tech­ni­cal assess­ments of wind tur­bines. The results are record­ed in the company’s own report­ing struc­ture and rep­re­sent a sol­id basis for the fur­ther dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing of the results in a life­time file. Sascha Schn­abel, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of wind­ex­perts Prüfge­sellschaft mbH, says: “We are very pleased that both the qual­i­ty of our tests and our report­ing struc­ture direct­ly address the needs of our clients.”

8.2 and CEE have also col­lab­o­rat­ed for many years in solar PV and wind ener­gy. Since this year, the inspec­tions of the tur­bines have been per­formed with a new test­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion tool which enables the experts to gen­er­ate dig­i­tal input for CEE’s data­base on the wind tur­bines them­selves.

“To enable wind and solar PV instal­la­tions to oper­ate as effi­cient­ly and secure­ly as long as pos­si­ble, we work as tech­ni­cal con­sul­tants and experts to offer a range of solu­tions. This approach ini­ti­at­ed by CEE is a new and good step for­ward and we look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing along this path with CEE,” explains Lau­ritz Hamm, head of the Wind Depart­ment, 8.2 Obst & Ziehmann GmbH.

Date of pre­sen­ta­tion of the CEE com­po­nents data­base at the Lin­stow Wind Ener­gy Days:

Wednes­day, 07.11.2018, 13:45h, “Forum 8 “IT & Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion”

Title: Ser­vices 4.0 — Dig­i­tal defect man­age­ment from start to fin­ish

CEE Group

The CEE Group, whose head office is in Ham­burg, is a pri­vate equi­ty group that spe­cialis­es in invest­ing in phys­i­cal assets and man­ages assets of about EUR 1.4 bil­lion. Equi­ty invest­ments are made, inter alia, in ener­gy pro­duc­tion projects in wind and solar PV. It has entered into a strate­gic alliance with RWE Inno­gy to coop­er­ate in tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments in young com­pa­nies. The CEE Group’s investors are a small num­ber of insti­tu­tion­al investors and fam­i­ly offices in Ger­many with a long-term inter­est in the mar­ket for invest­ments in renew­ables and phys­i­cal assets. The CEE Group was acquired by Brook­field Asset Man­age­ment in 2017.

soft­En­er­gy GmbH

Based in Ros­tock, soft­En­er­gy GmbH has been a part­ner for indi­vid­ual soft­ware solu­tions for wind tur­bines since 2004. The wind ener­gy infor­ma­tion sys­tem (WIS) sup­ports the com­mer­cial and tech­ni­cal man­age­ment of wind tur­bines and is mod­elled on tra­di­tion­al oper­at­ing sys­tems for quick and easy learn­ing. More than 50 cus­tomers place their trust in cus­tomised soft­ware solu­tions of soft­En­er­gy GmbH and use WIS to mon­i­tor and eval­u­ate more than 9,000 wind tur­bines and max­imise their per­for­mance and life­time.

wind­ex­perts Prüfge­sellschaft mbH

Since 2002, wind­ex­perts Prüfge­sellschaft has been the core of a net­work of inde­pen­dent experts for wind tur­bines. From more than 21,000 tests, the wind­ex­perts net­work has acquired a wealth of expe­ri­ence from tech­ni­cal inspec­tions of wind tur­bines, both onshore and off­shore. The wind­ex­perts net­work can draw on the ser­vices of 21 spe­cial­ists. Besides reg­u­lar inspec­tions such as com­mis­sion­ing, end-of-war­ran­ty and recur­ring tests as well as gear­box video endo­scopies, life­time exten­sion assess­ments and vibra­tion analy­sis of the dri­ve­train, wind­ex­perts net­work also per­forms tech­ni­cal inspec­tions in accor­dance with cus­tomer needs.

8.2 Obst & Ziehmann GmbH

8.2 Obst & Ziehmann GmbH is part of the 8.2 Group, a net­work of tech­ni­cal experts which was estab­lished in Ger­many in 1995. In the wind ener­gy seg­ment, the group’s exper­tise is based in par­tic­u­lar on the tech­ni­cal inspec­tion of over 40,000 wind tur­bines world­wide. The prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence gained from those inspec­tions enables the 8.2 Group to pro­vide very prac­ti­cal advice on many aspects. The main areas of focus are tech­ni­cal sup­port for oper­a­tors and investors in fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, tech­ni­cal due dili­gence, nego­ti­at­ing sup­port, mon­i­tor­ing of con­struc­tion work, accep­tance tests, opti­mi­sa­tion of oper­a­tional man­age­ment, tech­ni­cal inspec­tions, HSE advice and deter­mi­na­tion of the remain­ing ser­vice life (arranged accord­ing to the project cycle).

With more than 5,000 cus­tomers in 40 coun­tries, the track record of the 8.2 Group cov­ers about 15.2GW TDD wind, 5.3 GW con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing (4.0 GW offline, 1.3 GW online) and more than 4.2 GWp PV.

Press enquiries:   CEE Group: Alexan­der Sti­er Pub­lic Rela­tions / Mar­ket­ing Tel: +49 40 688 788–62 Email: stier@cee-group.de Inter­net: www.cee-group.de soft­En­er­gy GmbH Erich-Schlesinger-Strasse 25 18059 Ros­tock Tel.: +49 381 40587–530 Email: info@softenergy.de Inter­net: www.softenergy.de wind­ex­perts Prüfge­sellschaft mbH: Sascha Schn­abel Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Tel: +49 421 39 63 193 Email: s.schnabel@windexperts.de Internet:www.windexperts.de 8.2 Obst & Ziehmann GmbH: Christi­na Dittmer Tel: +49 40 18 12 604–15 Email:christina.dittmer@8p2.de Inter­net: www.8p2.de