Publisher's Note
Wind turbines are often subject to extreme mechanical stress. Condition Monitoring Systems (CMS) help ensure the stability, long service life, and optimal design of wind turbine components (rotor blades, drivetrains, inverter, gearboxes etc). Thus, it prevents complete failures, which are expensive, and allows significant savings.
More and more of the wind industry is recognizing the value of condition monitoring. To combat this, owners and operators are deploying condition monitoring systems (CMS) to detect faults before they cause secondary damage. Through this early detection, repair costs can be reduced, representing significant savings. With several technologies available (e.g. vibration, oil debris, SCADA), determining which one provides the highest value can feel like comparing apples to oranges. Unfortunately, there is no performance standard or benchmark for comparison. A prospective buyer is left with the difficult task of deciding what CMS will provide the right performance at the right price. To succeed in this assessment, it is important to focus on the overarching goal for the system: CMS is designed to provide users with recommendations that enable them to make optimal operations and maintenance decisions.
Despite the wind industry's dramatic development during the past decade, it is still challenged by premature turbine subsystem/component failures, especially for turbines rated above 1 MW. Because a crane is needed for each replacement, gearboxes have been a focal point for improvement in reliability and availability. Condition monitoring (CM) is a technique that can help improve these factors, leading to reduced turbine operation and maintenance costs and, subsequently, lower cost of energy for wind power. Although technical benefits of CM for the wind industry are normally recognized, there is a lack of published information on the advantages and limitations of each CM technique confirmed by objective data from full-scale tests.
Gearbox failure represents a big part of wind turbines' downtime; therefore, gaining reliability is key. Efficiency is also important in the drivetrain; hence, measurements can be used as a tool to increase both. Using monitoring, it's possible to keep track of the component's condition and detect potential breakdowns in time, thus preventing damage and most probably increasing the components' operational lifetime.
Online wear debris monitoring allows Wind turbine operators to plan, prevent and predict the damage of gearboxes, main bearings, and other costly components. For Wind (focusing on gearboxes), an Oil Wear Debris Monitoring Sensor is installed on the gearbox to gauge the life and health of the critical asset. Operators receive real-time data from the sensors to improve maintenances, catch damage missed by oil samples and vibration monitoring, and potentially prevent catastrophic asset failures.
As a real-life analogy, wear debris sensors are like the check engine light in your vehicle. While you may feel your car is running smoothly, engine sensors alert you of potential catastrophic – and oftentimes costly – engine failures down the road. We are receiving lots of compliments on publishing a series on Ascend (A guide to lubrication excellence) where we are giving a detailed breakup of all 40 elements. We are sure readers are taking advantage of implementing these in their manufacturing facility.
As always, we welcome your feedback on how to further improve the content and presentation of our publication.
Wishing all our readers Merry Christmas and a Happy 2022.
Warm regards,
Udey Dhir
