With technology for the monitoring and maintenance of wind turbines

Tulsa, OK-the use of technology in power plants automatically monitor industry standard, become, what a surprise in an industry work, the costs for each kilowatt hour cut is not. Although wind power is not unique in the use of technology, the value of this technology can be more efficient operating a wind power project.

"In the old days, when a big power plant, had recorded your boiler operators and your fire tenders and the people who actually around the plant and manually walked, temperatures and pressures and tested things on an hourly basis and wrote, that the information in the logs" Greg Shelton, Service Director for Alstom wind North America said. "The development of the industry was through technology - if you walk around 25 people and do this manually, we can use 10 people and dealing with technology?"

While the use can benefit from automated monitoring to improve efficiency in a natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant, is the same kind of system essential in wind power project, which can cover thousands of acres of land.

"It was soon recognized that if we a utility-scale wind power plant, the 200 turbines spread over 4,000 hectares of land is set, we will need some kind of technology that the operation of the turbine remote can monitor every aspect, just because the economy by that many people climbing, these sorts of things never 400 metres above the ground would work with," Shelton said.

Supervision of the data acquisition system (SCADA) based his turbine provides an all original manufacturer. The task of SCADA is the continuous monitoring of temperatures and a wind turbine production and discover potential issues before they become big mistakes.

Contrary to fossil-fired power plant wind power projects usually a before local staff based on don't have to around the clock, seven days a week. For wind power projects may be the first line of Defense for the site or hundreds of miles away.

"Certain times when you troubleshooting at are, or if a fault exists on the turbine, you can stop it can reset the error, look at the conditions and start back up the turbine or tried," Shelton said. "Our first reaction by controlling from a distance is sometimes instead of people to the turbine. The nice thing about these systems is that you can do it from an Office in Richmond or from building up on the spot, because the access is Web-based."

Although a SCADA system is used to monitor systems in real time, the operation of the system can be much more sophisticated. Shelton, said that the WindAccess system contains historical data and historical data reporting capabilities. That would to see not only the current temperature of bearing allow the monitoring of the system, a person, but you can also check to see what was the temperature of the last days or even months.

Allows the operator to which is monitored performance of a part for a long time, allows the company, if maintenance on a special turbine Shelton is said to avoid a State of alarm, which could turn off the turbine to prioritize.

WindAccess monitored more than 100 different data points, after Shelton and additional modules can be added to, provide a more detailed analysis. These modules can for more monitoring, which would capture vibrations and other similar factors. Although additional modules could come at a higher cost, Shelton said, they allow the operator to avoid additional problems.

"I think it boils down to looking ahead as possible," he said. "Walking in the next step should be more comprehensive data analysis of vibration and Acceleration sensors and the real driver for this is to reduce the cost of energy. If you can better understand events predictions or downtime, you can schedule then a corrective action when the wind blows is not and can the turbines to generate electricity 100 percent available during the times."

The WebWPS SCADA system uses a Siemens wind power site, offers a Web-based interface with a variety of views of the status of the electrical and mechanical data, operating and Merete hoe, head of Siemens said error status and weather and raster data, energy-wind-service diagnostic Center. In addition, the company offers a variety of remote diagnostic services, who can choose the customer a higher element of risk control and freedom.