Case Study: Vestas turns climate data into faster wind turbine placement with IBM BigInsights

Turning climate into capital with big data

Vestas, the world's largest wind energy company, faced the challenge of processing vast amounts of weather and location data to optimally place its wind turbines. The slow data analysis, which could take up to three weeks, delayed customer proposals and risked placing turbines in sub-optimal locations, affecting performance and warranty costs. To address this, Vestas worked with vendor IBM to implement a big data solution using IBM InfoSphere BigInsights software.

The IBM solution, running on an IBM System x iDataPlex supercomputer, enabled Vestas to manage and analyze over 2.8 petabytes of data. This reduced data processing time for site forecasting from weeks down to just 15 minutes and improved modeling accuracy by reducing the geographic grid area used by 90%. As a result, Vestas can provide customers with greater business case certainty, faster results, and a lower cost per kilowatt-hour of energy produced, all while reducing the energy consumption of its own IT footprint by 40%.

Vestas

Lars Christian Christensen

Vice President