Final Report Summary - WINTUR DEMO (In-situ wireless monitoring of on - and offshore WINd TURbine blades using energy harvesting technology - Demonstration)
Executive Summary:
The WinTur Demo project is a spin-off from the Research for SMEs (R4S) project WINTUR. The goal of WINTUR was to design a structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses two technologies: Acoustic Emission (AE) and Long Range Ultrasonic Guide Waves (LRUG); thereby enabling an early intervention to determine the onset of a failure, the propagation of a defect and address a repair before a catastrophic failure occurs giving rise to a costly long outage and even fatalities.
The aim of this project is to demonstrate that with the installation of AE and LRUG sensors and the associated data capture hardware and software that structural health monitoring (SHM) is cost effective for use with ‘new’ blades and also with ‘old’ blades.
The system installation and testing processes were successfully carried out at Centre for Renewable Energy Sources -CRES- (GREECE) on a NEG MICON 750/48 wind turbine under real working conditions. The previous WINTUR system was updated according to the new installation requirements defined by the wind turbine provider in order to carry out the installation process without mechanical modifications of the wind turbine and blades. This condition reduces the associated installation and maintenance costs and increases the capability of the system to be installed on different types of wind turbines.
A set of AE and LRUG sensors/transducers were successfully installed on the inner walls of the wind turbine blades within the first two metres from the root of the blade and according to the sensors/transducers topology previously defined, depending on the wind turbine blade mechanical structure. Additionally, the sensors/transducers replacement process was also carried out and a cross data analysis between the results obtained before and after the sensors/transducers replacement was executed. The outcomes from this analysis show that there are no significant signal variations between the old and new measurements and hence, the sensors/transducers replacement process does not have any impact on the system performance and detection capabilities.
On the other hand, and taking into account that no external damage and/or modifications can be made to the real wind turbine blades, two down scaled blades were manufactured, one with well-known defects and the other one without defects, in order to analyze and certify in a controlled lab environment, the measurement repeatability of the Winturdemo system and its detection capabilities. The lab tests were executed using the Winturdemo system and a set of sensors/transducers previously attached to the two down scaled blade surfaces.
The external communication with the WinTurDemo system is wirelessly performed by using a Team Viewer terminal and the software developed to control and monitor the status of the system is running on the WinturDemo system industrial PC.
Several wind turbine providers highlighted their interest in the WinTurDemo technology and they are looking forward to seeing the technical and validation results. A mature technology may be considered as a candidate for installation on their wind turbines as a condition monitoring system.
This is a demonstration project using the results of the R4S WinTur project.
Project Context and Objectives:
The WinTur Demo project is a spin-off from the Research for SMEs (R4S) project WINTUR. The goal of WINTUR was to design a structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses two technologies: Acoustic Emission (AE) and Long Range Ultrasonic Guide Waves (LRUG); thereby permitting an early intervention to determine the onset of a failure, avoid the propagation of a defect and address a repair before a catastrophic failure occurs giving rise to a costly long outage and even fatalities.
When a material undergoes a sudden stress or strain it emits sound waves and this is true for metal and also fibreglass reinforced plastics (FRP). Wind turbine blades are made from composite fibreglass reinforced plastics (CFRP) and contain a matrix of wood, glass fibre laminates, carbon fibre laminates reinforced with resin/epoxy. In a matrix of such material, cracking, fracture at the matrix-fibre interface and fracture of the fibre are some of the failure modes that occur. Cracking in the bond or tears at the spar or skin are significant failure modes in wind turbine blades. By placing an array of acoustic emission sensors within the internal structure of the wind turbine blade, the onset of a fracture/crack may trigger one or more sensors allowing the occurrence (onset) to be noted. Thus the AE sensor could be regarded as passive sensors that lie in waiting to detect the onset of a possible failure. In wind blades the FRP attenuates the signal and this makes analysis and location of the origin of the defect difficult, but not impossible using time-of-flight measurements. In view of this difficulty and to facilitate continuous monitoring Long Range Ultrasonic Guided Waves (LRUG) are used. Guided waves have been used extensively in monitoring metallic structures e.g. pipe lines, its use with composite material (as in wind blades) gives rise to a number of issues. Attenuation losses in the blade material and reduction in the signal amplitude due to dispersion are two of the issues. However these can be mitigated by careful selection of excitation, frequency and propagation mode.
The aim of this project is to demonstrate with the installation of AE and LRUG sensors and the associated data capture hardware and software that structural health monitoring (SHM) is cost effective for use with ‘new’ blades and also with ‘old’ blades. In the case of the latter, the sensors are retro-fitted on the outer surface of the blades, while with ‘new’ blades the sensors are placed in the inner cavity of the blade.
This is a demonstration project of the outcomes of the R4S WinTur project.
Project Results:
From the beginning of the project, the project partners made a great effort trying to find a wind turbine where the WinTurDemo could be installed. Several wind turbine providers such as Acciona Energia, Alston, Iberdrola, Gamesa and Gestamp wind were contacted and several meeting and installation visits were scheduled. All of them showed a great interest for the capability of the WINTUR and WinTurDemo systems due and the cost effective condition monitoring system. It was especially interesting because it provides a means of intervening well before a major fault develops, thus enabling formulation of a maintenance policy and schedule, well in advance. Future maintenance or repair interventions reducing in this way, decrease the likelihood of major failures (blades and turbine destruction) and human risks. This situation will strongly reduce the maintenance and operating costs of wind turbines and will sharply increase the income from the energy production due to extension of the wind turbines life. However, these wind turbine providers rejected the possibility of installing the system on their commercial, and operational wind turbines, due to it not being validated and tested before in real environments under real working conditions. It was another wind turbine provider, CRES, who, as a public renewable research centre and energy provider, allowed the installation of the WinTurDemo device on one of their wind turbines: NEG MICON 750/48. A Non Disclosure Closure Agreement was signed between CRES and the project coordinator on behalf of the rest of the project partners. The researching process of the wind turbine farm, obtaining the signature of the NDA and weather conditions introduced an important internal delay, although this has been resolved during the project life and before the overall project deadline. At this stage, all the project deliverables have been reported and all technical tasks executed.
WP1: Applicability of Wintur system and baseline demonstration criteria
All WP1 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D1.1 D1.2 and D1.3.
Task1.1: Definition of installation and operational requirements: In this regard, it was important to identify the location and type of wind turbine. The tower height of this wind turbine is about 44m and the length of its blades is about 23m. The rotor diameter is 48m. The diameter of the blades at the root is about 1.3 m and the blades are tapered. The installation and operational processes of the AE and LRU sensors and the associated electronics for data collection and communication were tailored to this turbine but are flexible enough to be used with various other models of wind turbines in operation in the field. As part of this exercise; the following were considered in order to define the project requirements and specifications -D1.1-: System (installation) location, blade structure, CRES' installation requirements, WinTurDemo hardware and software architecture, communication system, type and specification of sensors, etc.
Task1.2: Baseline in-service comparison and associated costs: This task involved a cost-benefit analysis of the Wintur inspection monitoring techniques contrasting conventional approaches to condition monitoring (CM). Cost / benefit analysis demonstrates the application of condition monitoring systems to be extremely cost sensitive. Increased system availability (low downtime) should be achieved by installing a system. Installation cost will be of the order of one additional day of generation per machine per year. The benefits of installing a system are three fold. Firstly low downtime, secondly reduced insurance and thirdly the potential for avoidance of secondary damage from a catastrophic fault. In the latter case the potential for avoidance of damage could value several tens of thousands of pounds but is difficult to quantify as off-line condition monitoring will be conducted routinely. If this is factored into the calculation the cost benefit model looks very much more favourable; more costly and functionally comprehensive systems begin to look feasible.
This model is based on data from mainly on-shore installations. Off-shore installations need to be designed to a consistently higher standard to achieve the same levels of availability. One key factor to off-shore operations is to reduce the requirement for a site presence, as access to site cannot be guaranteed. As would be expected, this is most critical during winter periods where, even with recent advances in support vessel design, accessibility is significantly reduced. Winter is also a time of generally higher wind speed and with that higher machine loads and increased incidence of failure.
This work is complete and reported in deliverable D1.2 (Operational Cost-benefit analysis)
Task1.3: Baseline costs and benefits during the installation and operation: The maintenance of wind turbine has a colossal impact on their economics as this activity could cost up to 90% of the investment. The cost of keeping a turbine running all year around is constantly on the rise thus the need to develop a cost effective condition monitoring system. The current preventive maintenance techniques have contributed to significantly reducing the overall cost of operations and maintenance, comparing with reactive maintenance approaches which only occurred when a component failed, thus was a high risk for cost effectiveness of the wind turbine.
The Wintur Demo Monitoring System will concentrate on the condition health monitoring of the wind turbine blades, by focusing on inspecting the root of the blade. The blade failure is the result of aging process, high turbulence intensity, lightning, and fatigue damage due to imbalance caused by erosion. Replacing a set of blades (reactive maintenance) will cost wind farm owners around 20-25% of the turbine cost, but a preventive maintenance (repair to prevent failure) will cost around 2-2.5% of the turbine cost (10% of the reactive maintenance cost).
WP2: Validation tools for Wintur system
All WP2 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D2.1 D2.2 and D2.3.
Task2.1: Environmental parameters: The environmental parameters such as wind/air conditions are directly available from the CRES' (wind farm) weather station tower. These data are broadcasted by CRES using ASCII files that can be imported and used by the WinTurDemo system. Additionally, internal temperature, humidity and dew point sensors have been installed into the WinTurDemo electronic box to monitor the status of the devices and to protect them against humidity and overheating. During the installation activities, the wind should be close to 0m/s in order to reduce the installation risk factors
Task2.2: Complementary data sources for condition monitoring: The work that has been carried out in this task was to integrate the transducers/sensors (AE and LRUG) with the software. Thereby allowing the data (signals) from the sensors/ transducers to be collected, stored and processed. Processing of the AE and LRUG data independently and cross-referencing enables us to enhance the predictive nature of the monitoring system. The signal acquisition and processing module coded using LabView.
Task2.3: Data integration into WinTur software: The heart of this task is the integration of all sensors, with environmental and operational data to be managed within a modular interface that permits automated and operator initiated analysis to give a full overview of the performance of the wind turbine. Bearing this in mind the deliverable D2.3 details the hardware components of the system and the test sequence to ensure proper system functionality during assembly of the prototype.
WP3: Deployment and Installation Procedures:
All WP3 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D3.1 D3.2 and D3.3.
Task3.1: Site functional parameters: This study compiled and discussed parameters associated with operational of the wind turbine and the limitation i.e. the conditions that would restrict or prevent the wind turbines to be operated. It also looked at the sensor integrity so that baseline subtraction can be relied upon when site conditions change and operation needs to be restricted or stopped.
Task3.2: Installation procedures for use with newly installed wind farm services: This task was focussed on how to describe, step by step, how the WinTurDemo AE and LRUG sensors/transducers and cables have to be installed on the inner walls of the blades. The technical specifications of both types of sensors/transducers and the mechanical structure of the blades were reviewed due to their strong impact on the number of sensors/transducers, their localization and the distance between them (Topology). This topology will have to be defined before carrying out a new installation process for each specific type of blade. The description of the wireless system has been explained in task3.3 and it is dependent on the type of wind turbine and wind farm facilities. These installation procedures were followed during the installation of the sensors/transducers on the two down scaled blade turbines.
Task3.3: Installation procedures for use with current wind farm turbines: Based on the installation procedures described in the task 3.2 -D3.2- and taking into account that the system had to be installed on a NEG MICON 750/48 at CRES, a set of step by step installation procedures were defined and described. These procedures were previously reviewed by the wind turbine provider and they were executed during the installation activities. The WinTurDemo electronic devices were installed inside the wind turbine HUB, the AE & LRUG sensors/transducers within the first two metres from the root of the blade and the external communication was performed by means of a wireless link.
WP4: Field Trials and Validation:
All WP4 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D4.1 D4.2 and D4.3.
Task4.1: System installation - New Fit: The WinTurDemo system has been successfully installed on a NEG MICON 750/48 wind turbine placed at CRES (Greece) -April 2014- and according to the installation procedures defined in WP3. The deliverable D4.1 describes this installation process, and shows some data acquired in a real environment and under working conditions in plot form and then in a preliminary post-processing analysis. Some minor technical issues were found after this first installation process and they were then resolved during the sensors/replacement activities. Task4.3.
Task4.2: System installation - Retro Fit and Task4.3: Maintenance operation and system evaluation upon sensor replacement: Following the installation procedures defined in WP3, the sensors/transducers replacement process was carried out in July 2014 -D4.2-. Within these activities, all the technical issues found after the first installation process, were resolved. A second set of measurement tests were carried out and the acquired data were analysed. The cross data analysis between both measurement process (task4.1 and task4.2) was undertaken and no signal variations were found. The repeatability of the system was validated.
Additionally, the D4.3 (final turbine operation trials) describes the research process that was carried out in order to find a real wind turbine where the system could be installed, the manufacturing process of the two down scaled wind turbine blades (with and without defects) and the signal post-processing analysis executed in order to validate the detection capability of the WinTurDemo system. No external damage can take place with the real wind turbine blades.
WP 5: Exploitation and protection of IPR:
All WP5 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D5.1 D5.2 D5.3 D5.4 D5.5 D5.6 and D5.7.
The WinTurDemo website, NDTwiki page and Wikipedia page have been prepared. The website is only, while the Wikipedia page and NDTwiki page are in draft versions, awaiting approval.
The dissemination activities plan is described in the deliverables D5.2 and D5.5 and the press releases, publications and other communications activities are collected in the deliverables D5.3 and D5.4.
WP6: Project Management and administrative coordination:
From the beginning of the project, all project partners made a great effort contacting to different wind turbine providers in order to get access to a wind farm and have the capability of installing the WinTurDemo system in a real environment under working conditions. This condition was completely necessary in order to successfully complete the project and perform the validation of the WinTurDemo system. Nowadays, all the administrative issues and internal delays have been resolved and the project has been completed on time in accordance with the overall project deadlines.
The coordinator has been in regular communication with all partners and vice-versa to facilitate the delivery of information and writing of deliverables. Regular emails, phone and webex conferences have been used with partners when needed to ensure the smooth running of the project. There have been no major problems. Some minor deviations and discussions have been smoothly managed
In respect of project progress and uploading of deliverables, the coordinator has monitored the project progress, prompting, requesting information and reports from RTD’s and SME’s as needed. This includes technology installation and knowledge management plans. The reports have been reviewed and uploaded via the dedicated portal.
Potential Impact:
Wind power is considered as a valuable renewable energy source that goes some way towards meeting our energy needs now and in the future and also reduce our carbon emissions. Because of these benefits, governments through various supportmechanisms to the renewable industry and utility companies are themselves increasingly investing in the construction of wind farms. The 2012 global capacity was 282Gb of which 8.5 31, 8, 7, 23, and 4.5Gb are in UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal respectively, this is an average of an 18.7% increase over 2011 and there is a projected increase of 24.6% over 5 years.
Wind energy has been the primary source of electrical generation in Spain in 2013. Spain is ranked as the fourth country in the world in terms of installed wind power after the US, Germany and China. By the end of 2013, was the system´s first technology with an installed wind capacity of 22,959 MW, a generation of 54,478 GWh, and a cover of the electrical demand of 20.9%
The wind energy sector invests around 85.5 million Euros annually in R&D and contributes directly and indirectly 2.6 billion Euros to GDP (0.24%).
This rapid increase in wind power capacity and thus the increase of construction of wind farms have had engineers and researchers looking at condition monitoring (CM) of the whole wind turbine generator to lessen the downtime in the event of a breakdown by pre-empting catastrophic breakdown via continuous structural health monitoring (SHM). In this particular project SHM is to monitor the health of the wind turbine blades. By so doing, for example the on-set of a crack can be detected and its progression monitored allowing an informed decision to be made for its repair before a catastrophic failure happens.
The potential benefit of the work performed to date and of the project as a whole is that it allows for intervention well before a major fault develops, thus allowing the formulation of a predictive maintenance policy i.e. scheduled maintenance with informed ‘data’ from the SHM rather than incur high cost in an unplanned repair or total blade replacement due to catastrophic failure. The latter potentially being quite destructive to human life and property.
List of Websites:
http://www.winturdemo-project.com/(opens in new window)
The WinTur Demo project is a spin-off from the Research for SMEs (R4S) project WINTUR. The goal of WINTUR was to design a structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses two technologies: Acoustic Emission (AE) and Long Range Ultrasonic Guide Waves (LRUG); thereby enabling an early intervention to determine the onset of a failure, the propagation of a defect and address a repair before a catastrophic failure occurs giving rise to a costly long outage and even fatalities.
The aim of this project is to demonstrate that with the installation of AE and LRUG sensors and the associated data capture hardware and software that structural health monitoring (SHM) is cost effective for use with ‘new’ blades and also with ‘old’ blades.
The system installation and testing processes were successfully carried out at Centre for Renewable Energy Sources -CRES- (GREECE) on a NEG MICON 750/48 wind turbine under real working conditions. The previous WINTUR system was updated according to the new installation requirements defined by the wind turbine provider in order to carry out the installation process without mechanical modifications of the wind turbine and blades. This condition reduces the associated installation and maintenance costs and increases the capability of the system to be installed on different types of wind turbines.
A set of AE and LRUG sensors/transducers were successfully installed on the inner walls of the wind turbine blades within the first two metres from the root of the blade and according to the sensors/transducers topology previously defined, depending on the wind turbine blade mechanical structure. Additionally, the sensors/transducers replacement process was also carried out and a cross data analysis between the results obtained before and after the sensors/transducers replacement was executed. The outcomes from this analysis show that there are no significant signal variations between the old and new measurements and hence, the sensors/transducers replacement process does not have any impact on the system performance and detection capabilities.
On the other hand, and taking into account that no external damage and/or modifications can be made to the real wind turbine blades, two down scaled blades were manufactured, one with well-known defects and the other one without defects, in order to analyze and certify in a controlled lab environment, the measurement repeatability of the Winturdemo system and its detection capabilities. The lab tests were executed using the Winturdemo system and a set of sensors/transducers previously attached to the two down scaled blade surfaces.
The external communication with the WinTurDemo system is wirelessly performed by using a Team Viewer terminal and the software developed to control and monitor the status of the system is running on the WinturDemo system industrial PC.
Several wind turbine providers highlighted their interest in the WinTurDemo technology and they are looking forward to seeing the technical and validation results. A mature technology may be considered as a candidate for installation on their wind turbines as a condition monitoring system.
This is a demonstration project using the results of the R4S WinTur project.
Project Context and Objectives:
The WinTur Demo project is a spin-off from the Research for SMEs (R4S) project WINTUR. The goal of WINTUR was to design a structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses two technologies: Acoustic Emission (AE) and Long Range Ultrasonic Guide Waves (LRUG); thereby permitting an early intervention to determine the onset of a failure, avoid the propagation of a defect and address a repair before a catastrophic failure occurs giving rise to a costly long outage and even fatalities.
When a material undergoes a sudden stress or strain it emits sound waves and this is true for metal and also fibreglass reinforced plastics (FRP). Wind turbine blades are made from composite fibreglass reinforced plastics (CFRP) and contain a matrix of wood, glass fibre laminates, carbon fibre laminates reinforced with resin/epoxy. In a matrix of such material, cracking, fracture at the matrix-fibre interface and fracture of the fibre are some of the failure modes that occur. Cracking in the bond or tears at the spar or skin are significant failure modes in wind turbine blades. By placing an array of acoustic emission sensors within the internal structure of the wind turbine blade, the onset of a fracture/crack may trigger one or more sensors allowing the occurrence (onset) to be noted. Thus the AE sensor could be regarded as passive sensors that lie in waiting to detect the onset of a possible failure. In wind blades the FRP attenuates the signal and this makes analysis and location of the origin of the defect difficult, but not impossible using time-of-flight measurements. In view of this difficulty and to facilitate continuous monitoring Long Range Ultrasonic Guided Waves (LRUG) are used. Guided waves have been used extensively in monitoring metallic structures e.g. pipe lines, its use with composite material (as in wind blades) gives rise to a number of issues. Attenuation losses in the blade material and reduction in the signal amplitude due to dispersion are two of the issues. However these can be mitigated by careful selection of excitation, frequency and propagation mode.
The aim of this project is to demonstrate with the installation of AE and LRUG sensors and the associated data capture hardware and software that structural health monitoring (SHM) is cost effective for use with ‘new’ blades and also with ‘old’ blades. In the case of the latter, the sensors are retro-fitted on the outer surface of the blades, while with ‘new’ blades the sensors are placed in the inner cavity of the blade.
This is a demonstration project of the outcomes of the R4S WinTur project.
Project Results:
From the beginning of the project, the project partners made a great effort trying to find a wind turbine where the WinTurDemo could be installed. Several wind turbine providers such as Acciona Energia, Alston, Iberdrola, Gamesa and Gestamp wind were contacted and several meeting and installation visits were scheduled. All of them showed a great interest for the capability of the WINTUR and WinTurDemo systems due and the cost effective condition monitoring system. It was especially interesting because it provides a means of intervening well before a major fault develops, thus enabling formulation of a maintenance policy and schedule, well in advance. Future maintenance or repair interventions reducing in this way, decrease the likelihood of major failures (blades and turbine destruction) and human risks. This situation will strongly reduce the maintenance and operating costs of wind turbines and will sharply increase the income from the energy production due to extension of the wind turbines life. However, these wind turbine providers rejected the possibility of installing the system on their commercial, and operational wind turbines, due to it not being validated and tested before in real environments under real working conditions. It was another wind turbine provider, CRES, who, as a public renewable research centre and energy provider, allowed the installation of the WinTurDemo device on one of their wind turbines: NEG MICON 750/48. A Non Disclosure Closure Agreement was signed between CRES and the project coordinator on behalf of the rest of the project partners. The researching process of the wind turbine farm, obtaining the signature of the NDA and weather conditions introduced an important internal delay, although this has been resolved during the project life and before the overall project deadline. At this stage, all the project deliverables have been reported and all technical tasks executed.
WP1: Applicability of Wintur system and baseline demonstration criteria
All WP1 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D1.1 D1.2 and D1.3.
Task1.1: Definition of installation and operational requirements: In this regard, it was important to identify the location and type of wind turbine. The tower height of this wind turbine is about 44m and the length of its blades is about 23m. The rotor diameter is 48m. The diameter of the blades at the root is about 1.3 m and the blades are tapered. The installation and operational processes of the AE and LRU sensors and the associated electronics for data collection and communication were tailored to this turbine but are flexible enough to be used with various other models of wind turbines in operation in the field. As part of this exercise; the following were considered in order to define the project requirements and specifications -D1.1-: System (installation) location, blade structure, CRES' installation requirements, WinTurDemo hardware and software architecture, communication system, type and specification of sensors, etc.
Task1.2: Baseline in-service comparison and associated costs: This task involved a cost-benefit analysis of the Wintur inspection monitoring techniques contrasting conventional approaches to condition monitoring (CM). Cost / benefit analysis demonstrates the application of condition monitoring systems to be extremely cost sensitive. Increased system availability (low downtime) should be achieved by installing a system. Installation cost will be of the order of one additional day of generation per machine per year. The benefits of installing a system are three fold. Firstly low downtime, secondly reduced insurance and thirdly the potential for avoidance of secondary damage from a catastrophic fault. In the latter case the potential for avoidance of damage could value several tens of thousands of pounds but is difficult to quantify as off-line condition monitoring will be conducted routinely. If this is factored into the calculation the cost benefit model looks very much more favourable; more costly and functionally comprehensive systems begin to look feasible.
This model is based on data from mainly on-shore installations. Off-shore installations need to be designed to a consistently higher standard to achieve the same levels of availability. One key factor to off-shore operations is to reduce the requirement for a site presence, as access to site cannot be guaranteed. As would be expected, this is most critical during winter periods where, even with recent advances in support vessel design, accessibility is significantly reduced. Winter is also a time of generally higher wind speed and with that higher machine loads and increased incidence of failure.
This work is complete and reported in deliverable D1.2 (Operational Cost-benefit analysis)
Task1.3: Baseline costs and benefits during the installation and operation: The maintenance of wind turbine has a colossal impact on their economics as this activity could cost up to 90% of the investment. The cost of keeping a turbine running all year around is constantly on the rise thus the need to develop a cost effective condition monitoring system. The current preventive maintenance techniques have contributed to significantly reducing the overall cost of operations and maintenance, comparing with reactive maintenance approaches which only occurred when a component failed, thus was a high risk for cost effectiveness of the wind turbine.
The Wintur Demo Monitoring System will concentrate on the condition health monitoring of the wind turbine blades, by focusing on inspecting the root of the blade. The blade failure is the result of aging process, high turbulence intensity, lightning, and fatigue damage due to imbalance caused by erosion. Replacing a set of blades (reactive maintenance) will cost wind farm owners around 20-25% of the turbine cost, but a preventive maintenance (repair to prevent failure) will cost around 2-2.5% of the turbine cost (10% of the reactive maintenance cost).
WP2: Validation tools for Wintur system
All WP2 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D2.1 D2.2 and D2.3.
Task2.1: Environmental parameters: The environmental parameters such as wind/air conditions are directly available from the CRES' (wind farm) weather station tower. These data are broadcasted by CRES using ASCII files that can be imported and used by the WinTurDemo system. Additionally, internal temperature, humidity and dew point sensors have been installed into the WinTurDemo electronic box to monitor the status of the devices and to protect them against humidity and overheating. During the installation activities, the wind should be close to 0m/s in order to reduce the installation risk factors
Task2.2: Complementary data sources for condition monitoring: The work that has been carried out in this task was to integrate the transducers/sensors (AE and LRUG) with the software. Thereby allowing the data (signals) from the sensors/ transducers to be collected, stored and processed. Processing of the AE and LRUG data independently and cross-referencing enables us to enhance the predictive nature of the monitoring system. The signal acquisition and processing module coded using LabView.
Task2.3: Data integration into WinTur software: The heart of this task is the integration of all sensors, with environmental and operational data to be managed within a modular interface that permits automated and operator initiated analysis to give a full overview of the performance of the wind turbine. Bearing this in mind the deliverable D2.3 details the hardware components of the system and the test sequence to ensure proper system functionality during assembly of the prototype.
WP3: Deployment and Installation Procedures:
All WP3 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D3.1 D3.2 and D3.3.
Task3.1: Site functional parameters: This study compiled and discussed parameters associated with operational of the wind turbine and the limitation i.e. the conditions that would restrict or prevent the wind turbines to be operated. It also looked at the sensor integrity so that baseline subtraction can be relied upon when site conditions change and operation needs to be restricted or stopped.
Task3.2: Installation procedures for use with newly installed wind farm services: This task was focussed on how to describe, step by step, how the WinTurDemo AE and LRUG sensors/transducers and cables have to be installed on the inner walls of the blades. The technical specifications of both types of sensors/transducers and the mechanical structure of the blades were reviewed due to their strong impact on the number of sensors/transducers, their localization and the distance between them (Topology). This topology will have to be defined before carrying out a new installation process for each specific type of blade. The description of the wireless system has been explained in task3.3 and it is dependent on the type of wind turbine and wind farm facilities. These installation procedures were followed during the installation of the sensors/transducers on the two down scaled blade turbines.
Task3.3: Installation procedures for use with current wind farm turbines: Based on the installation procedures described in the task 3.2 -D3.2- and taking into account that the system had to be installed on a NEG MICON 750/48 at CRES, a set of step by step installation procedures were defined and described. These procedures were previously reviewed by the wind turbine provider and they were executed during the installation activities. The WinTurDemo electronic devices were installed inside the wind turbine HUB, the AE & LRUG sensors/transducers within the first two metres from the root of the blade and the external communication was performed by means of a wireless link.
WP4: Field Trials and Validation:
All WP4 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D4.1 D4.2 and D4.3.
Task4.1: System installation - New Fit: The WinTurDemo system has been successfully installed on a NEG MICON 750/48 wind turbine placed at CRES (Greece) -April 2014- and according to the installation procedures defined in WP3. The deliverable D4.1 describes this installation process, and shows some data acquired in a real environment and under working conditions in plot form and then in a preliminary post-processing analysis. Some minor technical issues were found after this first installation process and they were then resolved during the sensors/replacement activities. Task4.3.
Task4.2: System installation - Retro Fit and Task4.3: Maintenance operation and system evaluation upon sensor replacement: Following the installation procedures defined in WP3, the sensors/transducers replacement process was carried out in July 2014 -D4.2-. Within these activities, all the technical issues found after the first installation process, were resolved. A second set of measurement tests were carried out and the acquired data were analysed. The cross data analysis between both measurement process (task4.1 and task4.2) was undertaken and no signal variations were found. The repeatability of the system was validated.
Additionally, the D4.3 (final turbine operation trials) describes the research process that was carried out in order to find a real wind turbine where the system could be installed, the manufacturing process of the two down scaled wind turbine blades (with and without defects) and the signal post-processing analysis executed in order to validate the detection capability of the WinTurDemo system. No external damage can take place with the real wind turbine blades.
WP 5: Exploitation and protection of IPR:
All WP5 deliverables have been successfully submitted: D5.1 D5.2 D5.3 D5.4 D5.5 D5.6 and D5.7.
The WinTurDemo website, NDTwiki page and Wikipedia page have been prepared. The website is only, while the Wikipedia page and NDTwiki page are in draft versions, awaiting approval.
The dissemination activities plan is described in the deliverables D5.2 and D5.5 and the press releases, publications and other communications activities are collected in the deliverables D5.3 and D5.4.
WP6: Project Management and administrative coordination:
From the beginning of the project, all project partners made a great effort contacting to different wind turbine providers in order to get access to a wind farm and have the capability of installing the WinTurDemo system in a real environment under working conditions. This condition was completely necessary in order to successfully complete the project and perform the validation of the WinTurDemo system. Nowadays, all the administrative issues and internal delays have been resolved and the project has been completed on time in accordance with the overall project deadlines.
The coordinator has been in regular communication with all partners and vice-versa to facilitate the delivery of information and writing of deliverables. Regular emails, phone and webex conferences have been used with partners when needed to ensure the smooth running of the project. There have been no major problems. Some minor deviations and discussions have been smoothly managed
In respect of project progress and uploading of deliverables, the coordinator has monitored the project progress, prompting, requesting information and reports from RTD’s and SME’s as needed. This includes technology installation and knowledge management plans. The reports have been reviewed and uploaded via the dedicated portal.
Potential Impact:
Wind power is considered as a valuable renewable energy source that goes some way towards meeting our energy needs now and in the future and also reduce our carbon emissions. Because of these benefits, governments through various supportmechanisms to the renewable industry and utility companies are themselves increasingly investing in the construction of wind farms. The 2012 global capacity was 282Gb of which 8.5 31, 8, 7, 23, and 4.5Gb are in UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal respectively, this is an average of an 18.7% increase over 2011 and there is a projected increase of 24.6% over 5 years.
Wind energy has been the primary source of electrical generation in Spain in 2013. Spain is ranked as the fourth country in the world in terms of installed wind power after the US, Germany and China. By the end of 2013, was the system´s first technology with an installed wind capacity of 22,959 MW, a generation of 54,478 GWh, and a cover of the electrical demand of 20.9%
The wind energy sector invests around 85.5 million Euros annually in R&D and contributes directly and indirectly 2.6 billion Euros to GDP (0.24%).
This rapid increase in wind power capacity and thus the increase of construction of wind farms have had engineers and researchers looking at condition monitoring (CM) of the whole wind turbine generator to lessen the downtime in the event of a breakdown by pre-empting catastrophic breakdown via continuous structural health monitoring (SHM). In this particular project SHM is to monitor the health of the wind turbine blades. By so doing, for example the on-set of a crack can be detected and its progression monitored allowing an informed decision to be made for its repair before a catastrophic failure happens.
The potential benefit of the work performed to date and of the project as a whole is that it allows for intervention well before a major fault develops, thus allowing the formulation of a predictive maintenance policy i.e. scheduled maintenance with informed ‘data’ from the SHM rather than incur high cost in an unplanned repair or total blade replacement due to catastrophic failure. The latter potentially being quite destructive to human life and property.
List of Websites:
http://www.winturdemo-project.com/(opens in new window)