Sites and turbines

Every record in the system hangs off a site: its meters, tariffs, operational events and maintenance tasks. The site register holds the site name, location and timezone, and whether the site is active, under maintenance or closed. Timezone matters more than it looks. Readings, events and production intervals are compared across sites, and an outage that starts at 23:40 local time belongs to a different day than the same moment in another region.

Turbines are recorded with their turbine number, rated capacity in kilowatts and commissioning date. Each turbine carries one operating state: operating, curtailed, maintenance or stopped. The state moves along that path as conditions change. A curtailed turbine is still available but held back. A stopped turbine is not producing. The difference matters when you explain lost production to an owner or offtaker.

The operations engineer keeps turbine state current as the day goes on, and the site manager owns the site register and the decision to put a site into maintenance or close it.

• One record per turbine. Register each turbine once with its turbine number and rated capacity, and change its state rather than creating a new record when it goes into maintenance.
• State follows the work. When a turbine is taken out for approved maintenance on its site, the operations engineer moves it to maintenance; when it is back, it returns to operating.
• Sites carry the context. Meters, tariffs, events and maintenance tasks are all recorded against a site, so the site view shows everything happening there.

Agree the site list with names, locations and timezones before importing anything else. Agree a turbine numbering scheme that stays stable when turbines are replaced or repowered. Decide who may change a turbine’s state, and whether curtailment instructions from the grid operator are recorded as events, as turbine state changes, or both. Prepare examples of a site going into planned maintenance, a turbine stopped by a fault and a turbine curtailed for a grid instruction.

A turbine trips on a gearbox temperature alarm during the night shift. The operations engineer moves the turbine to stopped and logs an alarm event on its site. In the morning the site manager approves a maintenance task, and the turbine moves to maintenance while the technician works on it. When the repair is done and the turbine is running again, its state returns to operating and the event is resolved.

At the end of the month the site manager can see, for that turbine, when it stopped, when maintenance started and when it was back. The production intervals for the same period show the lost available minutes, so the explanation to the owner comes from records, not memory.

• Turbine status board — Every turbine grouped by operating, curtailed, maintenance and stopped.
• Site register — Sites with location, timezone and current status.

• Event to resolution: How an outage or alarm moves a turbine from stopped back to operating.
• Turbine production review: How production intervals are recorded and reviewed.

Review the implementation plan and the data model before importing your sites and turbines.