No matter what kind of tools, there will be a life limit. The service life of wind turbines is usually twenty years. But does this mean that we can use wind turbines without worrying about their maintenance? The answer is negative. Even if the lifespan of a wind turbine is twenty years, we still need to do some regular maintenance. Today we will introduce the basic maintenance of wind turbines.
Checking
- Regularly check the appearance, wear, and tightness of key components such as towers, foundations, blades, hubs, gearboxes, generators, bearings, cooling systems, etc. Use drones or telescopes to assist in checking parts that are difficult to access at high places.
- Regularly clean dirt, sand, bird droppings, etc. on the surface of the blades. Professional cleaning agents and soft brushes can be used. At the same time, keep the interior of the cabin clean to prevent dust accumulation from affecting the heat dissipation and electrical performance of the equipment.
- Regularly check and replace lubricating oil and grease in key parts, such as gearboxes, bearings, etc. At the same time. Check and tighten all bolt connections to ensure that there is no looseness.
- Check the insulation performance, connection status, and heat dissipation of electrical components such as cables, junction boxes, converters, and control cabinets. Clean electrical components regularly to prevent dust accumulation.
- Check the integrity and effectiveness of lightning protection facilities such as lightning rods, lightning strips, and grounding devices. Measure the grounding resistance to ensure compliance with safety standards.
Daily operation and maintenance
Troubleshooting
Daily operation and maintenance include troubleshooting and inspection. Now, let’s move to the troubleshooting of the wind turbine. Troubleshooting is mainly to predict, detect, and eliminate wind power equipment faults. Troubleshooting is not easy to determine in terms of time, and there is no fixed work content. It requires personnel to have relatively strong technical strength, especially with professional skills in electrical and communication. This work is also one of the most technical and challenging tasks in the operation and maintenance of wind turbines.
People are the key factor. The work experience, technical level, and knowledge reserve of personnel determine the speed and effect of processing, which directly affects the normal operation of wind power. Excellent troubleshooting personnel generally need the technical skills (or equivalent experience) of an engineer or above and have about 2 years of work experience in similar models. The training of troubleshooting personnel takes a long time, and the personnel cost is relatively high.
Nowadays, personnel in this area are mainly employed by complete machine manufacturers and some key component manufacturers. Now, due to the different models of different manufacturers and different control systems, the cross-company mobility of technicians is not great. Even for excellent engineers, it takes more than half a year to adapt after changing a model. Therefore, such personnel need to focus on long-term training.
Inspection
Inspection refers to the regular inspection of equipment during routine maintenance. It is about once a month (or once in February), and each unit takes about 4 working hours. The working method is mainly visual, or simple testing, sometimes combined with troubleshooting.
The work content is relatively fixed, the main content includes checking the tightness and testing of small connectors, observing oil level, pressure, and wear of moving parts, and checking cable layout, component sound, and smell inside the unit. The inspection work is conducive to the mastery of the operation of the equipment, and can timely deal with the small problems in the operation of the wind turbine to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the wind turbine.
The inspection work is not difficult and the technical requirements are not strict, but it is difficult to have a fixed requirement to summarize all the work content. The experience of the inspector is very important, generally more than 1 year of work experience. As far as possible, arrange personnel who have a better understanding of wind turbines to participate, or engineers with certain fault handling experience to conduct inspection work.
