With sus­taina­bi­lity for a safe and dark sky.

Wall­dorf, Pader­born, 01 Octo­ber 2020

The retro­fit­ting of wind farms with the so-cal­led demand-based night mar­king (BNK) is making great stri­des. This should be good news for the resi­dents of wind farms. Because: the new tech­no­logy redu­ces the nightly red flas­hing of the wind tur­bi­nes by up to 98 per­cent, because the signal lights are only acti­va­ted when an air­craft approa­ches the wind farm. The pio­neer and one of the lea­ding sup­pli­ers of this

tech­no­logy is the com­pany Lan­than Safe Sky. In deve­lo­ping the sys­tem, the com­pany fol­lo­wed a sus­tainable approach right from the start. Thanks to good coope­ra­tion with the manu­fac­tu­r­ers, it was pos­si­ble to con­fi­gure the BNK com­pon­ents in such a way that, as a rule, the exis­ting signal lights on the wind tur­bi­nes can con­ti­nue to be ope­ra­ted. This saves resour­ces and is more cost-effec­tive for the wind power operators.

Now Lan­than Safe Sky is con­sis­t­ently taking a fur­ther step towards sus­taina­bi­lity: against the back­ground of the rapidly incre­asing num­ber of instal­led BNK sys­tems, it was deci­ded to locate the ser­ver struc­ture for pro­ces­sing the detec­ted signals in a green data centre. So it was obvious to take this step tog­e­ther with West­fa­len­WIND IT. The com­pany from Pader­born is part of the West­fa­len­WIND Group and has deve­lo­ped wind­CORES, a con­cept for the con­s­truc­tion and ope­ra­tion of data cen­tres in wind tur­bi­nes. “This clo­ses the cir­cle for us. It’s the per­fect sym­bio­sis in terms of resource effi­ci­ency and cost-effec­ti­ve­ness. In this way, wind power bene­fits from our sys­tem and we from wind power,” Olaf Schultz, aut­ho­ri­sed repre­sen­ta­tive of Lan­than Safe Sky GmbH, is plea­sed to say.

The move to the cli­mate-fri­endly data centre, which is ope­ra­ted in a wind farm in Lich­tenau near Pader­born, is sche­du­led to take place before the end of Octo­ber. At wind­CORES, the focus is also on the effi­ci­ent use of exis­ting resour­ces: for exam­ple, the rooms in the exis­ting wind towers and the digi­tal infra­struc­ture available there will be opti­mally uti­li­sed. “In Ger­many, rene­wa­ble ener­gies are also being shut down time and again because the elec­tri­city grid is over­loa­ded. These shut­downs also affect our wind farms. In 2019, around 5.4 TWh of cle­anly pro­du­ced energy was lost across Ger­many. This would allow one third of all data cen­tres in this coun­try to be ope­ra­ted in a cli­mate-fri­endly man­ner. So it makes sense to build energy-inten­sive data cen­tres where they can take the elec­tri­city directly on site,” adds Nina Schwen­ni­ger from windCORES.

About the companies:

wind­CORES is a brand of West­fa­len­WIND IT GmbH & Co​.KG, which is part of the West­fa­len­WIND Group. The group, based in Pader­born and Lich­tenau, ope­ra­tes and mana­ges around 170 wind tur­bi­nes with a total instal­led capa­city of 350 MW. It also has its own elec­tri­city sales divi­sion, a pho­to­vol­taic divi­sion and its own ser­vice team for the main­ten­ance of wind turbines.

With wind­Cores, West­fa­len­WIND wants to make the digi­tal world “gree­ner” and offer an inno­va­tive solu­tion for a dis­tri­bu­ted data centre infra­struc­ture of the future. The con­cept for ope­ra­ting cli­mate-neu­tral data cen­tres in wind tur­bi­nes was deve­lo­ped by the company’s sub­si­diary West­fa­len­WIND IT GmbH & Co​.KG in coope­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­sity of Pader­born and regis­tered as a patent. In 2019, the idea was awarded the Ger­man Data Centre Prize.

The Lan­than Safe Sky GmbH has the mis­sion to make the sky safer and nights dar­ker. It emer­ged from the foun­ders and play­ers of Lan­than, Air Avio­nics and RECASE and thus com­bi­nes the exper­tise of a lea­ding pro­vi­der of obs­ta­cle mar­kings, an avia­tion-appro­ved avio­nics sys­tem manu­fac­tu­rer and an expe­ri­en­ced engi­nee­ring and con­sul­ting ser­vice pro­vi­der from the field of rene­wa­ble energies.

The com­pa­nies invol­ved came tog­e­ther years ago to bring safe, cost-effec­tive and sus­tainable detec­tion tech­no­lo­gies to mar­ket with the Trans­pon­der BNK.

Over a long period of time, hard work was done to create accep­tance for this young tech­no­logy. With suc­cess, because a broad con­sen­sus was rea­ched: New legal regu­la­ti­ons in count­ries such as Ger­many, but also at the ICAO, the world’s hig­hest-ran­king inter­na­tio­nal civil avia­tion orga­ni­sa­tion, allow the use of trans­pon­der BNK tech­no­logy, which is emis­sion-free and based purely on the recep­tion of data that every air­craft trans­mits anyway.