Lighting for offshore MET towers and wind turbines

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Excerpt: Flash Technology, the U.S. developer of FAA lighting and monitoring equipment has teamed with Tideland Signal Corporation to provide a complete solution for aviation and marine safety at offshore wind farms. Flash Technology has over 2,000 lighting systems installed at wind farms across the U.S. The …

Lift assist ‘shortens’ long ladders

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Excerpt: Climbing 80 m to go to work may be routine for maintenance crews but three times in a day is a lot of climbing. By one account, only about 25% of turbine towers have service lifts. That leaves long ladders in the rest of them. Lugging up 20 lbs or more of equipment makes a climb more demanding. What …

Simple and Smart FAA Lighting

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Excerpt: The L350-864G is the result of thousands of installations worldwide in the wind-energy market, says its developer. The company adds that the 33- lb warning light is the best in class, first in reliability, easiest to install, and provides the lowest cost of ownership. Some highlights of the L350-864 …

Non-Halogen Flame Retardant Material Adds More

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Excerpt: Estane X-1425 thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) delivers lower smoke generation. The material is intended for wire and cable jacketing in nonhalogen flame retardant applications. The industry is placing greater emphasis on the development of new compounds that produce lower smoke and higher Limited O …

Tools for Torque, Tools for Tension

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Excerpt: Wind turbine OEMs provide plenty of guidelines and instructions for tightening the bolts on their equipment. Each bolt gets a prescribed torque or tension. Bolts that fasten tower flanges, for instance, are often tightened to 2065 ft-lb. while foundation bolts are assigned a particular tension. Tens …

A Better Way to Protect Generator Bearings

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Excerpt: Although many wind farms in the U.S. are generating electricity and well beyond a testing stage, their debugging continues. Many of these turbines suffer design-related failures within their first few years of operation. Damaged bearings, for instance, can cause generator failures, which lead to …

Tight or Not, This Bolt Tells

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Excerpt: The VLI or Visual Load Indicator is a tension indicator built into the head of a bolt or stud. Reading the dial tells whether or not the bolt has reached its proper fastener load. If the bright yellow tension indicator stripe is hidden on the black face, clamp load remains assured within ±5%. If th …

Films in Capacitors Let Them Self Heal and More

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Excerpt: The market for wind power is growing fast around the world. Two driving factors include higher prices for fossil fuels and concerns for their environmental impact. Also advancing is the efficiency of wind powered generators it’s steadily improving. One way electrical engineers are improving tur …

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 …

Guiding 200,000 Amps Safely to Ground

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Excerpt: A main lightning discharge is characterized by rapidly rising current that peaks at about 200,000 Amps and averages  about 30,000 Amps over its duration. Even though the event is over in milliseconds, there is great potential for harm  to personnel and damage to equipment. Personnel working around …