Keeping Wind Farms "Blowin' in the Wind"

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In our last Blog we talked about WW Partner Conference and the investments Microsoft is making with its partners. One example is the work we are doing with our Gold Certified Partner ICONICS around fleet management of wind farms. BTW, ICONICS was Honored as 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year for ISV/Software Solutions at the WWPC this month.

As power and utility companies continue to increase the percentage of renewables in their generation mix to help tackle the challenges of climate change, generation assets such as wind turbines present new challenges from an asset management perspective: they are unmanned resources that can be scattered over a wide geographic area and on many different terrains. New approaches are needed to optimizing operations at individual wind farms and managing an entire fleet of wind farms. The ability to connect a number of active wind farms from a centralized operations center(s) offers opportunities for increased efficiency, cost savings and better overall management of assets.

The solution in this video  shows how a company can use innovative software to manage a fleet of wind farms for:

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• Improved information visibility for better decisions and profit optimization

• Decreased asset downtime and associated preventative maintenance costs

• Strategic asset management and outage prevention

• Knowledge management and collaboration

• Enhanced knowledge retention

The solution is built on Microsoft Vista using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF applications can be deployed on the desktop or hosted in a web browser. It also enables rich control, design, and development of the visual aspects of Windows programs. It aims to unify a host of application services: user interface, 2D and 3D drawing, fixed and adaptive documents, advanced typography, vector graphics, raster graphics, animation, data binding, audio and video.

The Microsoft World Wide Utilities group believes that renewables will drive adaptation of collaborative software solutions, especially as the newer energy sources are integrated with existing systems. In this environment, Utilities will have greater need for business intelligence and fleet optimization solutions provided by Microsoft and its partners. - Jon