Vibration Monitoring Tells A Lot About Your Equipment

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Excerpt: A small vibration transducer attached to a wind turbine changes the way owners and manufacturers approach  maintenance. These sensors, called accelerometers, output millivolt signals proportional to their acceleration  vibration. They have a sensitivity range that matches the expected operating co …

CanWEA attracts top OEMs

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Excerpt: Officials for the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) Annual Conference and Exhibition in Toronto say they sold out all 350-booth spaces to 235 exhibitors at the September event. The attendee count topped 2,000. What’s more, the conference drew ten utility and commercial wind turbine OEMs, a …

Cleanfield Energy adds Smart controls to turbines

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Excerpt: A 3.5kW vertical-axis wind turbine is said to produce clean, reliable energy for residential and commercial applications. The system can mount on flat rooftops, as well as traditional towers and poles. The V3.5 from Cleanfield Energy, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, can be installed without the need to c …

Mouser Electronics now stocks tiny TI temperature sensor

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Excerpt: Mouser Electronics Inc. is now stocking the Texas Instruments TMP112 digital temperature sensor with SMBus and two-wire serial interface. It requires no external components and is capable of reading temperatures to a resolution of 0.0625°C. The TI TMP112 digital temperature sensor allows up …

Energy-efficient chokes for inverters in wind turbines

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Excerpt: A recent electrical choke design for power inverters in wind turbines is an inductive component that features low losses, low stray fields, a compact design, and energy efficiency.  Developer Sintermetalle Prometheus (SMP), based in Germany, uses materials made of powder composites engineered f …

Blade sensors could let turbines adapt faster

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Excerpt: Researchers have developed a technique that lets sensors monitor forces exerted on wind turbine blades, a step toward improving their efficiency by letting them adjust to rapidly changing wind conditions. The research by engineers at Purdue University and Sandia National Laboratories is part of …

Magnetic linear displacement sensor

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Excerpt: A magnetically actuated linear displacement sensor detects piston positions on pneumatic cylinders. The Q25L, from Turck, Minneapolis, comes in measuring ranges of 100, 125, 160 and 200 mm. The unit is well-suited for applications that require precise signal transmissions over long measuring dis …

Surge protectors shield from 40,000 to 200,000 amps

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Excerpt: Valvetrab-SQ surge protective devices (SPD) offer safe, reliable surge protection from 40,000 to 200,000 amps. The NEMA-style product series, from Phoenix Contact USA, Middletown, Pa, includes about 50 part numbers in three different mountable designs designated as CC for control cabinet, SP for …

Why Big Wind Turbines Depend on a Little Encoder

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Excerpt: Over the last two years, Karsten Jeppesen, Sales Manager at Denmark's Leine&Linde, has noticed a sharp increase in sales of encoders to the wind-power sector. The country relies on wind turbines for most of its new power in an effort to reduce environmentally-harmful emissions. And to improve th …