A project to develop and demonstrate a monitoring system, which could reduce the cost of generating electricity from offshore wind farms, has been launched by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).
The £5 million condition monitoring project is being led by Insensys in
partnership with EDF Energy, E.ON, Romax Technology, SeeByte and
Strathclyde University. The consortium will develop and demonstrate
systems to monitor the condition and performance of turbines and
predict future maintenance requirements for key components so they can
be corrected before expensive damage occurs. Systems will be installed
on onshore wind turbines and tested for 18 months with a further year
of tests planned for offshore wind turbines. It is estimated that
increased output, through reduced downtime, and reduced maintenance
costs, could result in a benefit of up to £50,000 per turbine, per year.