Drive along rural highways and you will see the ubiquitous skeletons of windmills along the skyline. Many of them are still used to provide power to charge batteries and to pump water to the surface for farming and livestock.

In recent years, there has been a huge effort to use the vast renewable energy source of the wind. Today, however, it is a high-tech world of aerodynamics, programmable logic controllers, exotic space-age materials and computers.

In southeastern New Mexico, 204 MW of wind generation is going skyward and redefining the term “high-tech.” In February 2003, FPL-Energy (Juno Beach, Florida, U.S.) began construction of the New Mexico Wind Center, which went into commercial operation in July 2003. The Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM; Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.), under the renewable energy sources program sponsored by the state of New Mexico, is purchasing the energy.

Funded by FPL-Energy, the project includes 136 1.5-MW GE Wind Energy turbines installed over approximately 15 miles (24 km) of high desert terrain. These machines are approximately 210 ft (65 m) tall and have an active yaw-and-pitch control with power/torque control and an asynchronous generator. These are the first turbines produced with GE Wind's low-voltage ride-through technology, which enables the turbines to meet transmission reliability standards similar to those demanded of thermal generators. The turbines also are equipped with WindVAR technology, which provides VAR support and control to the transmission system.

High-tech doesn't stop at the wind farm. The PNM switching station employs a protection and control system with a built-in human machine interface (HMI). Walk inside the control building and experience the 21^st century.

GE Industrial Systems (Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.) has made every effort to develop a user-friendly work place. Panels were laid out with an eye to maintainability rather than filling a space. There are no “pistol grip” controllers to be seen in this control house. Computer screens provide the interface, and relays communicate with each other and provide a host of information to the operator hundreds of miles away. A voting scheme is in place to reduce accidental trips of the transmission system. PNM's communications system has built-in intelligence to reroute itself via multiple microwave paths in the even of a path component failure.
Circle 160 on Reader Service Card or visit freeproductinfo.net/tdw