As the main energy source for industry, whether petroleum can be regenerated has been discussed by all walks of life. To be sure, oil is not a clean energy source. On the one hand, for the protection of the environment and ecology, we have to find clean energy to reduce the damage to nature; on the other hand, oil is directly linked to the U.S. dollar. In today's complex international situation, all countries hope to develop new types of energy. Get rid of dependence on the dollar.

China is a big energy consuming country, but with the development of society and economy, the energy structure has also undergone profound changes. According to statistics, domestic non-fossil energy accounted for 14.3% in 2018, and it is expected to reach 15% this year. Among the new energy sources are hydropower, wind power, solar power and nuclear power. Among them, industrial automation technology and equipment have been widely used in new energy power generation system composition, function realization, safe operation, optimized dispatch, power quality assurance, and further promote the development of new energy technology.

Application of industrial automation in the new energy industry

In the past five years of the new energy industry, under the stimulus of policies, the cumulative installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaic power generation has ranked first in the world. Among them, the application of automation technology and equipment in the field of new energy power generation is also becoming increasingly mature. From 2015 to 2019, the scale of industrial automation applications in the new energy industry rose from 96.97 billion to 109.93 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.2%. As the scale of new energy power generation projects increases year by year, the application of industrial automation in the new energy industry will also usher in a broader space for development.

Automation equipment mainly covers five aspects: control, drive, execution, feedback, and network, including industrial computer, SCADA system, DCS system, servo inverter, sensor, industrial Ethernet, etc. In the field of new energy power generation, automation technology and equipment are mainly used to ensure the regular and safe operation of the power system. In addition, it also undertakes related tasks such as fault detection, automatic system reconfiguration, and intelligent decision-making.

Taking the application of automation technology for wind power generation as an example, the automatic control subsystems below the wind turbine generators are respectively a pitch control system, a yaw control system, and a variable flow control system. Because wind farms are usually distributed in sparsely populated areas and harsh environments, centralized management is difficult, and the efficiency of manual operation and maintenance is very low. Therefore, automation technology is mainly used for the regional centralized control of electric fields, which collects, monitors, controls and optimizes the data of individual electric fields in the region to ensure the safety, reliability and economy of wind farms, so as to reduce the labor cost of electric field operation.

Wind power dispatching automation system structure

In the photovoltaic field, automation systems are mainly used for real-time monitoring and control of primary equipment such as battery arrays, combiner boxes, inverters, box-type substations, etc. of photovoltaic power stations to achieve equipment data collection, analysis, processing, event recording, storage, and pass Various styles of charts, trends, and reports show the operation of the power station, and monitor the power station data in real time.

Photovoltaic automation system architecture 

Intelligent challenges of automation equipment

From the wind power, photovoltaic and other industries, in addition to the operation control of the wind turbine itself, the application of automation technology in the new energy industry mainly solves the maintenance and testing of equipment. Whether it is a wind farm or photovoltaic power generation, once the equipment fails, it will affect the normal operation of the entire unit system and cause the overall service of the system to be interrupted. The main reason for the failure of the system is that it is caused by operating errors. For this reason, the value of automation equipment in the new energy industry reflects both reliability and labor costs.

The control system is very important for the detection, control and optimization of the operation of the power station. Wind direction and speed sensors, rotation angle sensors, vibration sensors, temperature sensors and other equipment are widely used in the new energy industry. With the closer integration of industrialization and informatization, the control system technology of new energy power generation, as the core of the automatic control layer, faces this intelligent challenge.

At present, the detection and protection of wind turbines puts forward new requirements for automation technology and equipment. Such as the state detection and control of vibration and deformation of the unit, the corrosion detection and protection of offshore wind turbines, etc. In the future, the new energy industry needs to be assisted by intelligent platforms such as industrial cloud platforms and big data platforms. The control system has more accurate detection capabilities, stronger data analysis capabilities and data transmission capabilities.