Company insight
foundation structure and tower all recyclable. Manufacturer Vestas cites that 83% of a turbine’s carbon footprint comes from the production of materials, while just 17% comes from transport. Research by organisations including manufacturers and the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult say that electromechanical refurbishment is important to minimise wind’s own carbon footprint. Vestas states that a refurbished component can reuse up to 70% of the materials compared to a new product, and a refurbished component saves, on average, 45% of CO2
emissions compared
to a new part, when reverse logistics – the cost of bringing the item from the turbine to the factory for repairs – is accounted for.
an electromechanical engineering company. “If the UK is to be ‘clean energy sourced’ by 2035, we’ll need to construct thousands of new wind turbines while keeping the current capacity running. Many turbines are already exceeding their intended service life – so long as they’re maintained correctly. Rewinding and refurbishing a generator can extend its life by 20 years, and this will relieve some pressure on the new build programme.”
A turning point
Houghton International (HI) is a service and repair company of electromechanical machines – generators, motors, transformers and pumps. Throughout its 38-year life, HI has maintained, repaired and refurbished a very wide spectrum of
When a turbine is offline, that’s lost revenue or energy that must be sourced from elsewhere, potentially from non-renewable sources.
More stakeholders are pressing the case for a circular economy in renewable energy, especially wind power. The ORE Catapult, a private-public innovation centre, estimates that, by 2050, the global wind industry will need to decommission as much as 85GW of offshore wind capacity and 1,200GW of onshore wind capacity. This provides an idea of the scale of the circular economy opportunity. “Refurbishing of wind turbine generators has enormous, and largely untapped, potential,” says Chris Robson, sales director at Houghton International,
these electromechanical assets but, while it had worked on ad hoc wind turbine generator maintenance, through the 2000s and 2010s the wind industry has been broadly reliant on OEM replacement or refurbishment.
In early 2020, Grannell Community Energy (GCE), a locally-funded community benefit society, contacted Second Wind Energy LTD with a problem. The group had bought and installed a second-hand 480V/800kW Enercon wind turbine, but the generator had failed after just one year in service. Second Wind
Turbine downtime means a significant drop in overall output, so ensuring that the repairing of generators is effective can result in cost saving and more sufficient performance.
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Energy specialises in sourcing new and used turbines for customers, installing them and providing maintenance, and it also removes generators and turbine assets for repair. GCE’s commercial scale wind turbine has a 4.2m diameter, 26-tonne generator located on a tall steel tower. HI was the only UK-based company that Second Wind Energy were satisfied could handle the full refurbishment of the damaged generator and they responded quickly and positively, offering a competitively priced full rewind of the unit. The majority of wind generators operate through a gearbox, so the much larger, direct drive generator was far less familiar to the team within HI, but their vast, multi-sector generator experience has given rise to a flexible, problem- solving approach. GCE’s generator was transported to HI’s Newcastle-upon-Tyne base, one of the only facilities in the UK that could accommodate such a big rotating machine. The project that unfolded proved to the customer, the wind turbine industry and HI that there is a truly environmentally-conscious, effective solution for rewinding and extending the life of wind turbine generators here in the UK. After assessing the damage, HI recommended a full rewind of the stator and rotor. Over 50 miles of copper wire, uprated to help ensure a long lifespan, was used in the rewind of the generator. The existing copper was stripped out and recycled. All 60 rotor bricks were reverse engineered and rewound using a process developed by HI that had been proven for decades on high-speed train alternators. The rotor bricks were put through a vacuum pressure impregnation process to seal them in a strong resin that is highly weather resistant and strengthens the entire rotor. The customer was delighted and, with that, more wind turbine repair and life extension projects began to flow in. The project demonstrated that Houghton International had the skills and knowhow to fully refurbish wind turbine generators, saving operators hundreds of thousands of pounds and many tonnes of carbon. “It’s not just the cost of repair or replacement to consider,” explains Robson. “When a turbine is offline, that’s lost revenue or energy that must be sourced from
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
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