Wind energy company Gamesa Wind Turbines on Friday inaugurated its new 'integrated service and monitoring centre' at Red Hills in Chennai.
The facility is equipped to handle all the functions of its service portfolios -- operations management, technical back-up office, spares and logistics management, control and training centre and repair circuit outlet -- under one roof.
Around 932 wind turbines which have been installed in India and neighbouring Sri Lanka by the company will be monitored and controlled round-the-clock from the centre. Also, as and when new installations get added up, they also would be connected to the control centre.
The Gamesa India is exploring the feasibility of covering geographical areas beyond India and set up an advanced monitoring prognosis centre. The vital data collected through Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition network would facilitate this mission.
As more and more wind farms across the country are being developed at very remote locations, often far away from the urban hubs, and conditions being unfavorable to work during nights, this control centre would help "monitor and operate the wind turbines remotely with very little human intervention," the company said in a statement.
"This will improve the availability of turbines for power production at the installation, besides helping in predictive maintenance," it added.
"Now that the wind market has shifted to a new market segment of independent power producers (IPPs) whose core business is selling power, the strategy is to set Gamesa service as a key differentiator in the renewable energy market and sustain the same," the company said in the statement.
Gamesa has also started to look into other areas of the market such as multi-technology business (providing operation and maintenance of other makes of turbines) and turbine life extension services for select models of other turbine makes.