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- Category: Articles
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After remotely monitoring several thousand wind turbines over the past 10 years, most of the wind turbine faults detected and diagnosed by the Brüel & Kjær Vibro Surveillance Centres have been related to the drive train. In this article, two case studies are given where the faults were detected and diagnosed in an entirely different but important component – the yaw bearing system. It is this system that bears the enormous static and dynamic loads of the nacelle and blades, and allows the nacelle to align itself into the wind.
By Mike Hastings, Senior Application Engineer, Brüel & Kjær Vibro, Denmark
- Category: Articles
Premature Failures in Wind Turbine GearboxesPremature failures in rolling bearings do not occur very often. In a wide range of applications including wind turbine gearboxes, however, premature bearing failures due to subsurface cracks have become increasingly reported, leading to high costs due to unscheduled downtime and unplanned maintenance efforts. The phenomenon of subsurface cracks in the microstructure of the bearing steel is often referred to as white etching cracks. ‘White etching’ refers to the white appearance of the altered microstructure when a microsection is polished and etched.
By Balasubramaniam Vengudusamy and Fabio Zanella, Klüber Lubrication München, Germany
- Category: Articles
Remote Sensing Device Performance CredentialsThe progress of lidars within the wind industry has been charted from the start by Windtech International. Articles as far back as the very first edition of the publication in 2004 have highlighted not only the fundamental principles of lidar, but also its applications – onshore, offshore and turbine mounted. On 18 June 2018, a significant milestone was reached whereby vertical profiling lidars – Leosphere’s Windcube and ZephIR’s 300 model – achieved levels of IEC Classification that allow consultants, developers and turbine manufacturers to have further confidence in the technology’s ability to measure across a range of environmental conditions. The lidars were demonstrated to operate with known and low uncertainties, making them suitable for the variety of applications that have become synonymous with these remote sensing devices: from resource assessment and site calibration to formal power curve testing.
By Ian Locker, John Medley, Michael Harris and Alex Woodward, ZephIR, UK
- Category: Articles
Innovation in Blade Damage DetectionUp to 23 per cent of wind turbine failurescan be caused by blade damage, with up to 25–30% of wind farm operation costs spent on operation and maintenance. Current damage detection options are limited and are used on an ad hoc basis at each turbine. New innovations on the market are now allowing wind farm operators to keep a closer eye on turbines while also reducing time and resources spent on monitoring. One such solution is ping.monitor, which is an innovative acoustic solution and a world-first application of aero-acoustic analysis for wind turbine maintenance and repair. It represents a seismic shift to an efficient, responsive monitoring system that significantly outpaces previous models.
By Matthew Stead and Jon Cooper, ping services, Australia
- Category: Articles
Solving the Triple Constraints of Quality, Time and CostsThermal cameras with very high focal length were previously exclusively developed for space and defence applications. Now they are available for the civil market and bring to the wind energy sector higher quality and performance, lower Health, Safety and Environment risks and similar competitive prices to existing solutions. Based on the research work of institutes like the Sandia National Laboratories, the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), Fraunhofer and private companies, the optical and thermographic inspection of wind blades becomes state of the art, so that certification bodies accept the ground-based thermographic inspection method as equivalent to the standard rope access method.
By Fabianna Tenorio and Jürgen Austen, Hensoldt, Germany
- Category: Articles
A Techno-Economic Analysis of the Concept
1.1 billion people worldwide (or approximately one in every five people) live without access to electricity. Electrification of geographically remote communities is particularly challenging. These communities exist in both the developed and developing worlds, with different economic development contexts within which electrification must occur.By Mohamed Mamdouh Elkadragy, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
- Category: Articles
An Open-Source Tool for Optimising Renewable Energy Components within Mini-GridsHybrid mini-grids (HMGs) are an ideal solution for remote settlements without energy access. HMGs are typically sized and optimised with commercial software that comes with the usual limitations and is lacking in transparency. The Reiner Lemoine Institute has attempted to develop an open-source alternative to standard software for modelling and sizing HMGs.
By Sarah Berendes, Reiner Lemoine Institut, Germany
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| #51 Senvion MM92 wind turbine installed in Serra do Caramulo, Portugal (courtesy Pedro Matos) |
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