Optimizing the control of multiple wind farms

While this case study explains a real-life use of Smart Grid Manager, unfortunately we’re unable to name the company due to strict policies.

Increased market volatility and the risk of negative returns

Renewable energy production fluctuates significantly day-by-day as it depends on weather or natural resources. This means that there is often more generation available than demand for electricity, causing imbalances in the power grid and a volatile spot market. 

With multiple generation sites across Benelux, the energy company in question was all too familiar with the challenges that increased market volatility creates, especially when it comes to negative electricity prices on the spot market. 

It’s hard to imagine but when there are negative energy prices, generation owners can end up paying money to offload their energy to the grid, instead of getting paid for what they generate. 

The total number of hours with negative prices has been growing vastly and is having a significant impact on the business case of renewable energy assets. In 2024 the Dutch market had negative prices for 458 hours, and it’s expected to exceed 500 hours in 2025. And this problem is not limited to the Netherlands, it is EU-wide. 

Luckily, this can be avoided by curtailing generation when the market prices are unfavourable or the Distribution System Operator (DSO) sends a curtailment instruction based on congestion management tactics. However, the Dutch energy company lacked a standardized control mechanism that is needed to curtail their sites, as well as a holistic view of asset and market data. 

Creating a single source of truth for generation and market data

The Dutch energy company required a solution to consolidate all their data streams into a single platform, so that it could accurately monitor production levels and asset conditions in real-time, and adjust production in line with its energy strategy or as requested by the DSO. 

As one of the company’s experts explains: “With our portfolio of solar and wind farms, we aim to respond as effectively as possible to changes in the energy market. By intelligently managing the solar parks and wind turbines in our portfolio, and reducing energy production during peak moments, we help alleviate congestion in the electricity grid. This minimizes our exposure to negative prices on the wholesale market.”

Instead of developing a new platform which would be costly and time-consuming, the company decided to look for a way to connect its assets to its existing market platform. And when it came to choosing a trusted partner, Helin was a natural choice having already worked with the company on its geothermal sites. 

Until that point, Helin’s middleware solution, Smart Grid Manager, hadn’t yet been used with these kinds of wind turbines so the next step was to develop a specific wind plugin. 

Developing a plugin for wind turbines 

In record time, Helin developed a wind plugin which integrates with the core Smart Grid Manager solution. The wind plugin allowed the Dutch energy company to connect their wind turbines to their management platform, realizing unified asset control and data management. 

Within the company’s management platform, it now has a centralized overview of all asset (OT) data, market information, and its energy strategy.

Before deploying the Smart Grid Manager, the commissioning team at Helin carried out automated site acceptance testing to ensure it was successfully reading and writing data signals from both sides. The Dutch energy company also performed its own testing to confirm that they were able to curtail the turbines remotely and in real-time.

Smart Grid Manager is now used across multiple turbines at three of the company’s wind farms, meaning that its operators can fully monitor and control these generation assets all in one single platform. 

Protecting asset condition of wind turbines 

Ensuring safety and visibility in wind energy operations is crucial. Systems like the IPS (Ice Prevention System) and the Slagschaduwsysteem (a Dutch requirement for shadow flicker mitigation caused by turbines) help maintain safe and compliant turbine operations. 

Additionally, the availability of production capacity is essential to the functioning of electric grids so access to accurate data on real-time wind turbine asset condition is critical. Smart Grid Manager is the third line of protection when it comes to controlling the production of the turbine, complementing these safety and visibility measures. 

This protection hierarchy applies to ensure that the turbines remain available to the DSO in icy conditions (i.e. the blades don’t freeze) and also that local residents aren’t negatively impacted by reducing constantly shifting shadows caused by turbine movement.

To protect the turbines themselves, Smart Grid Manager prevents them from being curtailed below 5% of their capacity to protect against damage to the turbine’s operating mechanisms. 

Not only does Smart Grid Manager help the Dutch energy company to maintain high availability for the turbines, but it also helps reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) expenses as it can carry out preventative work or investigate potential issues if it sees the asset condition deteriorating. 

This all means that the DSO can better manage the generation availability, considering the dependence on natural resources, and minimize frequency imbalances as the system is able to operate based on ramp rates. 

Optimizing use of assets across wind, solar, and geothermal portfolio 

Helin and the Dutch energy company have been successfully working together for many years now, and the Smart Grid Manager is currently in operation at multiple geothermal sites and wind parks. 

We’re excited to continue the partnership with this company to help meet their evolving needs, whether that’s building new plugins for different generation types, adding new features, or exploring new use cases. 

The Helin approach: innovation, value-focused, collaboration 

At Helin, we take an innovative, value-focused and collaborative approach to developing solutions for our customers. This means we often develop new plugins or system configurations based on our customers needs, like we did for this wind turbine plugin.

All of these plugins are added to our library of plugins and can be easily used by any customer with Smart Grid Manager. It also enables us to add plugins to comply with new regulations, such as the Realtime Interface in the Netherlands. 

So whether you own or operate a portfolio of wind, solar, BESS, geothermal, hydro, storage or another type of energy asset, we can help you monitor and control your assets more efficiently and generate greater returns.

Getting started with Smart Grid Manager

Are you looking to optimize operations at your generation or storage sites? Is your asset data streamed and stored separately from your other other operating systems? The Smart Grid Manager might be the perfect solution for your needs. 

Want to learn more? Get in touch for an introduction call or read our case study on how Sunrock optimized its solar farms with Smart Grid Manager.