| Profil Title | Monitoring of the energy performances and pre-fault diagnosis for Renewable Energy Sources | |
| Reference Nr. | 08 IT 53U9 0J6V | |
| Country of origin | Italy | |
| Profil Type | Offer | |
| Entry/Update | 2009-01-27 / 2010-05-26 |
Abstract | A spin-off company based in southern Italy involved in activities related to the Renewable Energy Sources (RES), has developed a system to monitor the energy production efficiency of Photo Voltaic and wind plants. The company is looking for industrial partners interested in engineering the system prototype that is already available or research organisations for the joint development of new applications. |
Details | The Italian research group based in southern Italy, has been involved for several years in research activities related to the RES. The most recent achieved results have led to start up a spin-off company with the intention to turn research results to an innovative product. A prototype of monitoring systems has been implemented based on: i) inferential statistics for Photo Voltaic (PV) and wind plants applications ii) a processing mechanism of high resolution infrared camera data for fault diagnosis of PV and wind plants. In many European countries, the energy production deriving from RES is directly related to the economic support obtainable. Then, the monitoring of the energy performances is very important task for both technical and economic points of view. In a standard approach for energy efficiency monitoring of the RES plants (specific case of PV plant), the descriptive statistical analysis allows taking information about the operation of the PV plant related to a past long period; in this manner all the electrical and energy data available for a time range are taken into account. This analysis allows detection of happened or happening mis-operations/failures. Similar approach and analysis can be easily utilised for wind farms Unlike in the standard approach, inferential statistics allow the PV plant to be monitored during its operation. This approach is effective only if a preliminary analysis of the PV plant has been carried out in order to characterize the typical performance parameters of the PV plant related to the installation conditions. This step allows the expected values of the performance benchmarks to be compared with the real ones in order to evaluate the amount of the mismatches (if they’re present) and their causes. A second methodology is based on Infrared thermography by means of high-resolution thermo-cameras, for pre-fault and fault diagnosis of PV and wind plant. The utilised cameras are able to: 1) highlight present failures with better accuracy than ensured by low-resolution cameras 2) give light information characterizing the pre-fault conditions through image pre-processing and processing . The pre-processing step is used to eliminate or reduce the noise of the infrared thermographs, while the processing step enables the extraction of the image features. Innovative Aspects: When a failure for RES happens, the energy production decreases, then, also the economic revenue decreases. The innovation of the proposed technology consists in applying advanced statistics tools to study in depth the behaviour of a plant under test. The proposed approach, unlike the other ones on the market, allows a misoperation to be highlighted before it becomes a failure. Then, the behaviour of the plant results optimized and the reduction of the economic benefit is minimal. |
Technology sector | - Data Processing / Data Interchange, Middleware - Imaging, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition - Photovoltaics - Wind energy - Statistical Analysis |
Market application | - Network test, monitoring and support equipment - Photovoltaic solar - Wind energy - Other alternative energy (including nuclear energy) - Engineering services |
Stage of development | Available for demonstration - field tested |
Patent Rights (IPR) | Secret know-how |
Cooperation type | - Joint further development - Testing of new applications - Adaptation to specific needs - Engineering - Technical consultancy # Type of partner sought Industry; academy and/or research organisation # Specific area of activity of the partner Renewable sources of energy or infrared applications # Task to be performed academy and/or research organisations can cooperate for the joint development of new monitoring procedures; industrial companies can engineer the prototype with the technical assistance of the developer, who would provide the know how on the procedures to be implemented |
Organisation type | Other Org. Size: < 10 |
| Status | update |