FEATURE SPONSOR ADVANCES IN REMOTE SENSING & MONITORING
For wind turbines this means gaining experience through many years of condition monitoring and data analysis – in Romax’s case, years were spent refining these methods and now Romax monitor over 3.5 GW of assets globally, with access to a huge database of faults and failure modes.
ECOCMS TRACK RECORD
Track record is important – ecoCMS has been installed and proven on many different turbine types including Vestas V80, Siemens 2.3 MW, GE 1.5 MW, Vestas V52.
Figure 3 shows an example of a main bearing during flushing by Romax.
Figure 2 shows an example main bearing fault detected on a GE 1.5 MW using ecoCMS and Romax InSight’s Fleet Monitor software.
OPTIONS FOLLOWING DETECTION
When main bearing damage is detected, the operator generally has three options… 1 Continue running the turbine and monitor the damage 2 De-rate the turbine and schedule repair 3 Stop the turbine and replace the main bearing
In the first two scenarios, the turbine continues to run and debris from the damaged bearing typically accelerates the failure – pieces of metal from the damaged bearing surfaces are retained in the grease and pass between the rollers and raceways. This causes further debris indentations and surface-initiated damage which causes more debris to accumulate.
The only way to overcome this problem is to remove the grease, but simply ‘purging’ grease by pumping fresh grease into the bearing is not effective and does not remove debris in the pockets between the rollers.
A much better solution is to flush out the contaminated grease and repack the whole bearing with fresh grease. Romax developed and patented a unique process and equipment for grease flushing, which has proved to be highly effective for extending main bearing life.
SUMMARY
In summary, CMS is an extremely powerful tool and has proved to be a sound investment for a huge number of multi-megawatt wind turbines. Romax Insight has developed an affordable ecoCMS in order to enable CMS on a wider variety of windfarms and turbine types.
People talk a lot about CMS hardware but, as we have seen in the examples above, the software and analysis methods are equally important when it comes to detecting faults. With solutions like these in place, operators can finally maximise the benefit from CMS without breaking the bank.
Dr John Coultate
Head of Engineering Development Romax Technology Ltd
Click to view more info
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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