MONITUR

Reduction in Maintenance Costs of Wind Turbine Renewable Electricity Generation through Online Condition Monitoring

 Partecipanti

Mappa

 Word cloud

Esplora la "nuvola delle parole (Word Cloud) per avere un'idea di massima del progetto.

 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'To achieve the EC binding targets of 20% electricity generation from renewables by 2020 will require between 600 and 833 TWh to be produced by wind power which will require between 119,000 to 165,000 new turbines. According to the European Wind Energy Technology Platform publication “O&M strategies are based on periodic inspection; fault statistics from existing stock is either unavailable or insufficient; maintenance needs to be minimised through preventative strategies and tools like conditional monitoring; performance of offshore farms is severely impacted by poor reliability leading to major production losses.” Turbines are not achieving a design life of 20 years with failure rates of >1/turbine/year, remote tall structures mean that maintenance and inspection is costly and difficult. Replacing a €3000 bearing can turn into a major €165,000 cost involving cranes, crews etc. For on-shore turbines operation and maintenance costs 10-15% of income over 20 years, rising for offshore to 20-25%. Intermittency of wind power also requires standby generation by open cycle gas turbines (aero-derivative units) in order to attain rapid start-up and load following capability. These units have markedly lower MTBF compared with steam and gas turbines. This consortium wish to develop a means to perform prognosis, diagnosis and root cause analysis of rotating machines via new time-frequency analysis techniques (based on higher order spectra) to the machine vibration signature during transient operation. This differs from classic techniques which have been applied to stationary signals. Thus we overcome the problems that components cannot be excited during steady state operation and precise resonance frequencies are not known. Our project will enable the prediction of component life based on measurements, not calculation even with the problematic nature of wind loads and through preventative maintenance dramatically reduce the maintenance costs within the industries mentioned.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Recent research demonstrates that, on average, wind turbines fail at least once per year causing tremendous loss of income and delivered power. New online monitoring technology being developed with EU support should remedy this situation.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

EU goals to achieve 20 % of total electricity generation from renewable energy sources by 2020 requires between 119 000 and 165 000 new wind turbines. Current turbines are not reaching their design life of 20 years and operation and maintenance costs during those 20 years are prohibitively high. The EU-funded project http://www.monitur.eu (MONITUR) is developing improved condition monitoring technology to ensure European wind turbines make the grade.

Scientists are focusing on new time - frequency analyses and algorithms for rotating machines that differ from classical approaches applied to stationary signals. The novel methodology will enable more accurate prediction of component life based on experimental measurements rather than on calculations, dramatically reducing maintenance costs.

The team has created a special setup for shaker experiments that ensures vibrations are passed from shaker to blade without any interference or anomalies. A laser vibrometer measures blade velocity and an accelerometer on the shaker provides feedback for control. A wind turbine widely used in Europe was purchased and assembled for in-field tests. The team has also developed a finite element model to extract blade frequency information.

Researchers have now developed the MONITUR signal analysis algorithms for diagnosis, prognosis and root cause analysis. The open system architecture software platform exploiting these has been designed and tested. In parallel, the team has conducted research to identify dissemination and marketing opportunities and prepared a draft delineating patent (intellectual property rights) potential.

The equipment and services sector related to wind power is largely dominated by big companies. MONITUR intends to exploit opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises to make significant progress on well-defined problems with such online monitoring technology for wind turbines.