CalWind Resources owns and operates a wind farm in Tehachapi, California. The wind farm has been in operation for many years, but with a new requirement to report data to the California Independent System Operator (ISO), CalWind Resources needed to procure and install new measurement and communication equipment. Campbell Scientific equipment was chosen to be installed on the wind farm to meet those needs.
The California ISO operates the wholesale power system in California, with the goal of providing higher transmission reliability while controlling costs. The California ISO acts as a key platform to achieve California’s clean-energy goals. To meet its goals and manage the power grid, the California ISO requires renewable-energy generating facilities to report secure, real-time weather and power data.
For the weather data measurements, a weather station based on a Campbell CR800 datalogger was installed on a permanent meteorological tower. The station measures wind speed and wind direction at two heights, as well as temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure.
A power meter located at a separate location on the wind farm is used to measure voltage, megawatts, and megaVARs. Typically, a remote intelligent gateway (RIG) serves as the primary means for secure communication between generating facilities and the California ISO’s energy management system (EMS). A CR1000 and NL200 are used in this system to provide the RIG solution. The CR1000 gathers the data from both the weather station via the PakBus protocol and from the power meter via the DNP3 protocol. The NL200 is used as a secure proxy server to provide secure DNP3 communications with the California ISO.
Due to site constraints, a wireless IP network was implemented using IP radios to communicate between the RIG, the weather station, and the power meter. Data from both the weather station and power meter are reported to the RIG, which acts as a data accumulator and as the California ISO source for all weather and power data from the site.
