Climate chamber tesing of wind turbine components, why? how? and Where?
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Offshore Wind Infrastructure Application Lab (OWI-Lab) For efficient and reliable offshore wind energy.
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Since 2012, OWI-Lab houses a large climatic test chamber to test and validate heavy machinery and large wind turbine components in extreme climatic settings. The presentations gives an introduction to OWI-Lab, explains why extreme temperature testing is needed and shows how this is done in the OWI-Lab test facility
Transcript of Climate chamber tesing of wind turbine components, why? how? and Where?
Offshore Wind Infrastructure
Application Lab (OWI-Lab)
For efficient and reliable offshore wind energy.
Offshore Wind Infrastructure Application Lab
A Flemish Funded R&D initiative that aims to increase the reliability and efficiency of offshore wind farms
OWI-Lab is embedded within Sirris, the collective centre of the Belgian technological industry.
Industrial Initiators of OWI-Lab
Industrial Coordinator Scientific Coordinator
Introduction
What does OWI-lab do?
Investing 5.5M € in test and monitoring infrastructure to support (offshore) wind power R&D in the whole industrial value chain 4 investment programs in R&D infrastructure
Platform to initiate local and European research projects together with industry and universities (SBO, O&O, FP7,…)
Innovation projects with / for companies in the wind power sector
OWI-Lab services
Laboratory testing Field testing (offshore)
Laboratory testing: Large climatic test chamber
Climate chambers exist for development testing Commonly used in the automotive, aerospace, defense industry for robustness & reliability tests No PUBLIC large climate chambers yet dedicated to wind energy application and heavy machinery capable of handling heavy and large components (multi-MW components) dedicated auxiliaries for system testing
Focus: Cold & Hot climate wind turbine component testing Prototype development & Design verification Model validation Performance tests Certification tests Training of O&M teams Examples: Gearboxes, Transformers, Power convertors, Pitch & yaw systems, Switch gears, Hydraulics, Cooling & heating systems, Maintenance lifts,…
Cold climate: big market – big challenges
Why extreme temperature testing?
On & offshore wind turbines standard designed to operate in temp. range of -10 °C +40°C.
In some cold climate regions turbine need to operate at -40°C or even -50°C ; in hot regions +50°C can occur.
A proper cold start procedure has big influence on the reliability and productivity (idling & heating strategy).
Storage specifications of turbine components can even be lower than the operating condition.
Example from components in an offshore turbine (client specification):
Storage: -40°C to +50°C
Operation: -20°C to +30°C
Why extreme temperature testing?
Validation of CCV & HC turbine components:
Main bearing
Gearbox / Generator
Pitch & Yaw
…
What?
Cold start-up procedures (time-to-grid; break-away torque)
Behavior of (new) low temp oils & greases
Effects of additional heaters
Deformations due to low temperatures
Cooling performance in hot temperatures
Condensation on electronics caused by thermal fluctuations and during downtime
Tests on low temperature materials (deformations, brittle seals, cracks…)
…
Why extreme temperature testing?
Overstress behavior & testing
Most CCV: -30°C
Recent weather US/Canada/China: -35°C -46°C
Training of O&M and Installation teams
Example laboratory service (climate chamber testing))
Case: Cold test CG SLIM transformer for offshore turbine Short circuit test Storage test
No-load drivetrain test bench
Other turbine components?
Generator tests? no-load test in climate chamber
Load Bank :
up to 6000kVA
No-load test bench
up to 10kNm break
away torque
Inner dimensions climatic test chamber: 10m x 7m x 8m (LxWxH): Large dimensions to cope with multi-MW wind turbine components.
Mobile test bed trailer: 150 ton capacity
No-load test bed: to simulate cold start-up behaviour ; 10kNm breakaway torque available with frequency controlled drive.
-60°C to +60°C Temperature test range of large climate chamber
Test-specimen: gearboxes, generators, hydraulic transmissions Case: ZF CCV 2.1MW gearbox
http://www.owi-lab.be/
@OWI_lab
Group: Offshore Wind
Infrastructure
Application Lab
(OWI-Lab)
Thank you for your attention!
