Reduce operational management costs of wind farms, leverage optimisation potential with service and insurance and create synergies between these operationally relevant areas: This is the aim of the research project „Good Practice Operation Wind Energy“, in short GoodWind!, in which wpd windmanager is involved as an associated partner. The project also seeks to contribute to a lower environmental impact and lower resource consumption.
LIFE CYCLE RECORD OF THE PLANT
„Our goal is to map the ’state of health‘ of a wind turbine on a platform“, explains Kim-Lea Freudenreich from the technical management at wpd windmanager. For this purpose, information from different systems, is brought together to create a life cycle record and to display the current condition of the turbine. „The existing systems are thus linked more closely together and we obtain a more comprehensive view of the wind turbine,“ says Freudenreich.
„We can detect damage more quickly and take preventive measures.“
„With the RDS-PP reference designation system, we are also standardising the designation of the individual wind turbine components. This provides the basis for a manufacturer-independent comparison“, explains Fabian Bode, from the technical management, who is in charge of the project with Kim-Lea Freudenreich on the side of wpd windmanager. The data compression helps to compare the wind turbines more easily. Thanks to a more comprehensive insight, damage is detected more quickly and preventive measures can be initiated.
REDUCING OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT COSTS OF WIND FARMS
If bearing damage is detected at an early stage, it is possible, for example, to replace only a bearing instead of an entire gearbox. This leads to savings in the operational management costs of wind farms and also in CO2 emissions for the production, transport and replacement of a potential gearbox.
Initiator of the GoodWind! project is the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences and the fk-wind: Institute for Wind Energy, with Prof. Dr. Carsten Fichter as project manager. Furthermore, NW Assekuranz as insurance broker and Deutsche Windtechnik as service company are involved. The project is supported by BIS Bremerhavener Gesellschaft für Investitionsförderung und Stadtentwicklung mbH with funds from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) from the „Applied Environmental Research“ funding programme of the Bremen Senator for the Environment, Construction and Transport.