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02 · ResearchIEEE, 2023

Teaching a turbine to anticipate the wind.

A model that predicts the right blade pitch from turbine sensor data, so the turbine produces more power.

  • Python
  • XGBoost
  • Time series
“Can a turbine see the next gust coming?”Press play · 8 scenes · scroll to watch it unfold ↓
+21%Power output

01

The wind moves first.

Can a turbine set its blade for the wind that is coming?

02

77,760 readings.

Three simulated 250 kW turbines, every 10 minutes for six months. The paper used hourly data.

03

A simple model misses by a third.

Linear regression: 33.95% error on the blade angle.

04

Predict. Then correct the miss.

XGBoost predicts the angle. A second model learns only from its mistakes.

05

33.95% → 1.11%.

Error down 96.7%.

06

+21% energy.

In the published paper: 841.54 → 1,019.41 kWh on a sample day.

07

Google did it at scale.

DeepMind predicted 700 MW of wind 36 hours ahead. Its value rose about 20%.

Sources: Google DeepMind, 2019 ↗

08

Next: real wind.

Simulated data is clean. A working turbine is the real test.

Next storySupply Chain Intelligence↗“When does a simple model beat XGBoost?”