Wind Turbine Problems

Today as I write this, I have seen a quick video of a wind turbine collapse in Spain https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7180805386671689728/ and it set my mind back to a small list from about 5-6 years ago with the most common problems with wind turbines that affect performance, cause downtime and affect revenue generation.

Most of these problems with wind turbines still occur even with more modern innovations and service solutions to combat them at present.

1. Leading edge erosion and icing on the rotor blades. Its has been said in some reports in recent years that blade LE erosion causes up to 1.3 million euros loss in the lifetime of electricity generation. Ice formation on blades has been able to be studied in giant sized climate chambers in recent years. More insight into LE protection and Nano based coatings will improve this.
2. Poor control parameters. Getting the pitch wrong in certain wind speeds affects the performance and in turn affects generation, causes vibration, wear and tare on the components. Get it right and smooth operations are to be found especially as the offshore turbines seem to generate an average higher rotor speed.
3. Cooling system problems. Overheating of turbines is a problem and more research over recent years has been studying ways to combat this more effectively. These too have been tested in recent times in climatic chambers with R&D of new types of cooling transformers.
4. Hydraulic problems. With everyone having a mobile phone we are seeing more and more examples of WTGs catching fire and being posted on social media and the majority are believed to be hydraulic oil on hot components catching fire. The impact of remote sensing over recent times is aiming to combat this problem optimising design and performance thus reducing maintenance and critical costs like failure and fires.
5. Bad balance of the rotor. Two types of imbalance, firstly there's mass imbalance which occurs when the mass of a rotating body is not evenly distributed around the centre of gravity. This results in uneven forces during rotation, which can lead to vibrations and oscillations. The forces acting in mass imbalance are usually centrifugal forces and inertial forces. You have several things causing mass imbalance like blocked drain holes causing accumulations of water internally. Major blade repairs on one blade or even errors in the manufacturing of one blade or its balancing. Ice accumulations also. Then next you have an aerodynamic imbalance. This occurs when the aerodynamics of the rotor blades are uneven, resulting in forces that can throw the rotor out of balance. To calculate aerodynamic imbalance, various factors must be taken into account, such as wind speed and direction, the number of rotor blades, the shape and size of the rotor blades, and the geometric arrangement of the rotor blades. That also links the turbine to poor control parameters also, The blade pitch along with icing, plus even poor composite repairs to the blades affecting there profile characteristics, thus the performance and vibration.

All the 5 points above have issues with increased wear, reduced service life of the turbine, safety risks and a reduced energy yield. Combating these issues is years old but still ongoing in the wind industry especially as the construction of turbines is climbing in numbers both on and offshore.

More modern approaches like good service schedules and regular inspections with consistent monitoring techniques are improving the safety, lifecycle and performance of WTGs leading to a better generation of electricity.

Will we be able to look back at this list of issues in another 5 or 10 years and have systems in place that combat these so they become a thing of the past.

Innovation in #wind is getting better and better each year and I have faith that this list could be non existent in 10 years.