Following the green movement, electricity generation has gone green. Clean and anti-pollution energy issues are now taken very seriously. Wind power is an important solution because it is easy to build, no pollution is generated, and the cost is low. A wind farm is generally a group of individual wind turbines at the same location. These turbines can generate electric power while a generator is pushed by the wind power.
A large wind farm may consist of hundreds of individual wind turbines and may cover a hundred square miles of land. The land between these turbines may be used for agriculture or other purposes. Wind Farm electricity generation can effectively reduce damages to the environment in comparison to other electricity generation methods. Because of the advantages of wind power, ICP DAS has actively developed corresponding equipment and helps many manufacturers solve control and monitoring problems that are commonly experienced while building wind farms. The Inner Mongolia Wind Farms Project was completed in 2011.
The manufacturer used large inverters and PLC’s with ICP DAS's GW-7433D Modbus TCP Server / RTU Slave to CANopen Master Gateway, I-7520 RS-232 to RS-485 Converter and NS-205 Industrial Ethernet Switch to monitor and control the wind turbines. The PLC needs important information like voltage, current, wind speed, torque, and power output. The PLC controls the motion of the wind turbines. When the PLC detects the wind speed or the torque is too high, it may be dangerous so the PLC stops the wind turbines to prevent damage. After the wind speed or torque slows down, the PLC lets the wind turbine operate again.
GW-7433D provides data transformation between Modbus TCP and CANopen protocols. It also supports disconnection detection mechanisms in Ethernet and CANopen interfaces. If the Ethernet connection is broken, the GW-7433D stops the wind turbine immediately. If the CANopen interface is off-line, the GW-7433D issues a warning to notice the PLC for safety. After recovery of the Ethernet and CANopen interfaces is confirmed, the GW-7433D informs the PLC and the wind turbine will operate again.