Data Navigator: Data Act and wind energy from an association perspective

The topic of episode 39 of the Data Navigator Podcast is – once again – the importance of the Data Act for wind energy. Our guest is Stefan Grothe, Technical Officer at the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), the largest association in the renewable energy sector with over 17,000 members.

We start with an overview of the wind energy ecosystem: Who are the typical stakeholders – from operators and managers to manufacturers and independent service providers, direct marketers and grid operators? Stefan Grothe explains why the operator structure in Germany is particularly heterogeneous – from community energy companies to large energy suppliers.

One focus is on the data generated by wind turbines: Performance data, weather data, temperature, vibration monitoring and voltage data – usually as ten-minute SCADA data . What is particularly exciting is that the data flow is bidirectional – grid operators and direct marketers can also actively control turbines, for example in the event of grid bottlenecks or negative electricity prices.

We discuss the new opportunities opened up by the Data Act: higher-resolution data for better condition monitoring, more precise predictions on the service life of large components and new business models centred around predictive maintenance. Subsystems also play an important role here – such as condition monitoring systems on gearboxes, bearings and rotor blades, whose data has often remained with the manufacturer or service provider up to now.

When it comes to trade secrets and IP protection, Stefan Grothe takes a differentiated view: Reverse engineering via data analyses is conceivable in principle, but is only relevant in practice after a long period of operation, if independent service becomes possible at all. It is also clear that knowledge of the Data Act is still patchy in the industry.

Finally, Stefan Grothe takes a look at the economic drivers: falling liability caps in maintenance contracts, increasing demands on electricity production costs and the growing importance of better data analyses for insurers and financiers make the Data Act strategically relevant for the industry.