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December 2009
Independent machinery verification
Global demand for renewable energy, along with deregulations in the market opens up new opportunities for wind power operators. And everyone wants a piece of the breeze. With wind and other renewable energy sources as a significant part of the strategy for energy conglomerates, the global market is quickly becoming highly competitive. The evidence is seen in the changing scenery of wind farms. What used to be small associations running a couple of dozen turbines, scattered along a coastline, is now a million-dollar business with hundreds of turbines, stretching out across land and sea.
Innovation drives the wind of change
In order to meet the rapidly growing demand for energy, operators are now seriously focusing on how to improve efficiency in production by sorting out the teething problems that always arise when technology takes on new tasks. Every day, new suppliers are proposing new technologies, which operators have to combine with existing ones. Often, separate sub-systems such as rotating equipment, transformers and control systems are bought from different suppliers, who are not responsible for the integration into the entire system. Turbine manufacturers and site contractors have this responsibility, but even with proper type approval, the technical complexity is such that problems arise.
Operators need to ask themselves:
- What in-house competencies are necessary to face the complexity of wind energy technology?
- If a technical dispute arises, whom do I turn to for an unbiased evaluation?
- If something should go wrong with an innovative design, is there a fallback plan to ensure production?
- Is production running on full efficiency or can I optimize it?
"Our job goes beyond verifying that a design satisfies prevailing standards. We need to drive the technology so that a machine or a process not only meets the standards, but we also need to work with the most recent knowledge to ensure that a new solution is fit for purpose within the actual physical boundaries," Claus Myllerup says. Claus is the Managing Director of the engineering consultancy, Lloyd's Register ODS.
The ideas of today pose the challenges of tomorrow.
Type approval helps operators gain confidence that, by meeting a set of standards, everything works together. However, with all this new technology, many different suppliers and expanding power grids, disputes of technical nature can easily arise. Indeed, meeting industry standards is the best start, but naturally, at these levels of innovation, standards can struggle to keep up.
It is important to continuously combine the lessons learned from experience, with an abiding understanding of fundamental physics and then apply that to the design in question.
"Every single time you face a new technology, you may face new problems, even when according to standards, things should be running smoothly," Graeme Keith, Special Projects Manager says. "Understanding the complications is really quite simple; if we want a reliable answer to what might go wrong, we must first understand why things behave the way they do. And that is the complex part. Our approach is using our expertise to analyse a design based on its fundamental physics, whilst drawing on our insight from other disciplines and industries," Graeme explains.
Think in terms of potential technical troubles
Design review and verification as well as performance validation of the entire power unit is important in order to achieve the operability, accessibility and reliability needed to ensure decent profitability.
A halt in production due to material failure, instability of the grid or other failures potentially costs operators millions of dollars in downtime alone. A wind turbine is an extremely complex piece of machinery and getting the full return of investment requires an understanding of each of its individual elements:
the
- the reaction of the grid the electric mechanical couplings
- the vibration patterns of the blades
- the structural dynamics of the construction
- the properties of the base
- the machinery dynamics of the rotor and generator
Each of these elements alone present technical challenges, but understanding how they operate together is the crucial part. In addition to the internal complexity of the turbine, the external circumstances that might also affect the performance and lifetime are present.
"We look at the likelihood of something going wrong and then the consequences of it going wrong. And from that risk-based approach, we give recommendations. Operators should be confident that everything will work together and have a back-up plan if anything should go wrong," says Claus Myllerup.
- farms being unequally exposed to wind because of their vastness
- production moving offshore into more difficult environments
- extreme weather conditions
- generators experiencing irregularities in output
- stability problems of the local as well as regional grid
Money matters
Constructing and operating wind farms requires immense investment. Good risk management is what makes it a profitable business.
"Wind power is growing at the rate of thirty percent annually. It is clear that producing renewable energy is the future for this planet and it is our future business. As in every energy industry, we have a responsibility to produce as safely and efficiently as possible," Claus says.
But producing affordable energy from resources that we can only harness when nature is in our favour, takes careful planning. For the people responsible for risk management, independent verification is a valued contribution. Operators often combine their acquired sense for weighing up risks with detailed analysis of critical equipment. They bring a lifetime of experience from other industries when moving into the renewable market.
"Combining technical experience with discipline expertise and managing the interaction between the two is a typical task of independent experts. They address technical challenges from the perspective of fundamental physics, and always in close dialogue with the operator," says Claus Myllerup.
"Communication drives creativity and that leads to new possibilities. When operators can feel confident that there is always a way, they have the freedom to explore the ideas of tomorrow, Claus concludes.
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