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ADVANCES IN REMOTE SENSING & MONITORING FEATURE SPONSOR LOW-COST CONDITION


A few years ago, the benefits of condition monitoring systems (CMS) were being debated strongly and many operators were unsure whether to retro-fit CMS.


Thankfully, the technology has now become widely accepted – the industry has recognised the benefits and CMS is here to stay. However, there are still some big challenges that need to be overcome.


MONITORING FOR WIND TURBINES MAKING CMS MORE AFFORDABLE


One solution to deploying condition monitoring more widely is to make it more affordable – exactly what Romax InSight has done with ecoCMSTM. In recent years much has changed in the field of CMS and data acquisition. The idea of putting ‘intelligence’ in the data acquisition box or in the sensors has proved to be unnecessary – this drives up cost and the limitations on data storage and transmission are not relevant these days.


Also, the explosion in embedded computing means that high performance systems can be deployed at very low cost, particularly compared to other systems in the market – most of which are based on outdated and expensive approaches to architecture.


MAIN BENEFITS


The business case for CMS is complex, but ultimately boils down to three main benefits…


1 Catastrophic failures can be avoided 2 Crane costs are minimised by combining operations 3 Downtime is reduced; improved annual energy production


Quantifying these benefits is possible by looking at previous detection examples, failure rates and cases where money has been saved through the early detection of faults. ROI models of varying complexity can be constructed based on this information and used to help in the decision making process.


SUBSTANTIAL COSTS


The technical benefits of CMS are very clear, but windfarm owners and operators still face big challenges when it comes to justifying the ROI to their senior management. The fact of the matter is that the cost of most CMS products available today is just too high and therefore the majority of onshore turbines still don’t have CMS installed.


Recent figures show that in the US, in the sub-1.5 MW range, over 95% of turbines do not have CMS installed [source: MAKE Consulting, 2015]. In the 1.5 - 2.29 MW range, the majority of turbines (59%) still do not have CMS. Only for larger machines of 2.3 MW+ is CMS the norm; installed on over 91% of turbines of this size – mainly driven by factory-installed systems such as on the Siemens 2.3 MW. Similar trends are observed in Europe, the main difference being that CMS is installed as standard on all new offshore machines, typically above 3.6 MW.


ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATION


Another factor that has hindered CMS is the ability to detect faults in low-speed components such as the main bearing and planetary stage. Many condition monitoring systems from other vendors struggle to detect these failure modes.


To detect these types of faults, a system needs to use suitable sampling parameters and the analysis software needs to use appropriate signal processing methods, tuned to the specific application – not as simple as it sounds. Although much of the mathematics dates back to the 1960s, using it effectively requires a deep understanding of the application and its operating conditions.


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