Scientists at University of Bremen to Improve Offshore Wind Farms (Germany)

Recent findings show that the intelligent software protects wind turbines against overload and avoids breakdowns. This development of the BMBF-funded joint project “Wint-LES” will be tested in practice.

Offshore wind farms play an important role in energy transition, but the requirements for wind turbines are enormous. Weather conditions do not allow constant access to the wind turbines for equipment maintenance or repair. Thus a single small error can lead to a halt and large losses. Scientists at the University of Bremen with its partner, Converteam, have developed a method that can help identify problems early, reduce downtime, improve maintenance and extend the life of wind power plants.

This is the result of „Wint-LES” project which was launched two years ago at the Institute for Electrical Drives, Power Electronics and Devices (IALB) of the University. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has funded the project with 500,000 €.

“With the intelligent software, we can measure much better the stress on the mechanics of wind turbine” says Professor Bernd Orlik from IALB. With this software, defects can be detected much earlier, so the maintenance of wind turbines can be optimally planned. This data is transmitted over the internet to a central data repository and then evaluated.

Scientists have developed the necessary procedures using mathematical models in their laboratory and successfully tested them at the pilot plant. The procedure for evaluating the mechanical loads can be used in this integrated system for remote diagnosis, as it can easily be used in existing wind turbines.

[mappress]

Offshore WIND staff, January 18, 2012; Image: idw-online