Life Extension of Main Shafts

 

The wind sector context and situation in Spain favours the life extension of wind farms over repowering, so the search for new and innovative solutions for extending the operating life of wind turbines, while keeping the maintenance costs at acceptable levels, is the focus of many wind sector stakeholders. The embedding of autonomous and smart sensing technologies in wind turbine components is a current technological trend that allows the online condition monitoring of turbine structural integrity and the optimisation of operational life and maintenance costs. In this context, Tecnalia presents LEO, an autonomous ultrasonic monitoring system for main shafts, which has been validated in the field and is currently in operation in several wind turbines in Spain.