Energiekontor’s Rotor Blade Extension was present at the HUSUM Wind Congress 2017, one of the biggest wind trade fair organized in Germany. From 12 to 15 September wind industry businesses came together at HUSUM Wind, to showcase their innovations and services.
Despite the phase-out of the federally-granted production tax credits (PTC), a torrent of renewable energy is entering the U.S. market.
Energiekontor presented its services and products, including RBE – Rotor Blade Extension, that is a product fully developed and tested, which consists of an additional blade tip segment, fixed at the blade tip of the rotor. RBE increases the efficiency of wind turbines, and for that reason has captured the interest of wind farm owners and operators.
To capture the attention of investors, RBE team had a booth located in the Offshore and Innovation Forum in Hall 2. Our team had the opportunity to make known the RBE project, the advantages of the product and the results of the installations already carried out.
Our engineers also had the opportunity to establish some contacts with suppliers, operators and to know new innovations and products in the area.
HUSUM Wind is an exhibition of technologies like efficiency, digitalization and sector coupling. But it also shows what the top energy transition resource can do for climate protection and what framework it needs to be able to do this.
Visitors and exhibitors discussed technical innovations and political conditions. A total of around 700 exhibitors from Germany and 25 other countries came together in Husum. In addition to the well-known industry leaders, the list of exhibitors also boasts many innovative enterprises.
See here some photos of the RBE team presence at HUSUM congress 2017:
Measuring the impact on the turbine lifetime due to the Rotor Blade Extension
After the installation campaign of the Rotor Blade Extension in Penedo Ruivo – Portugal, Energiekontor started to perform an extensive testing campaign which included, among other things:
– Measurement of the overall impact loads on blade root after coupling the RBE
– Measurement of the fatigue loads on the turbine in order to compare its lifetime with the RBE installed
– Measurement of the natural frequency of the tower and blades
– Measurement of the distance between the tower and blade tip
– Blade Mass balancing and Blade Angle deviation campaigns
n order to understand what would be the impact on the turbine lifetime, due to the installation of the RBE, two major tests were performed, i.e. the measurement of the blade root loads and fatigue loads onto the blade.
INEGI, a renowned Portuguese research and technology organization, performed these campaigns and provided us with the test results.
The scope of this campaign comprised a specifically designed system, which was able to perceive the loads from two turbines, placed right beside each other that have the same wind profile and were erected at the same time. One of these turbines had the RBE installed while the other one did not. The ultimate goal of the analysis was to assess what additional amount of loads is caused by the RBE, by comparing the blade root loads of both wind turbines.
The experimental apparatus, which collected the suffered loads on the blade root, ran for 1 year, in order to obtain all the wind profiling from around the year at the location. All the procedures and calculations were performed, taking into account the IEC 61400-13 standard for all testing campaigns.
The final results from both tests indicated that, according to INEGI’s report, regarding the blade root loads: “The potential load increase induced by the RBE is deemed as negligible as, in fact, such loads are virtually weight derived ones and the increase of weight due to the RBE is practically residual. Even for demanding wind regimes, the increase in wind-derived average loads is not expected to exceed 1% in the analyzed blade samples.”
For the fatigue loading campaign, the following conclusion was obtained: “The fatigue analysis stresses this conclusion as no obvious trend in strains was found when comparing results from the two turbines, both in the number of cycles and strain amplitude.”
Therefore, from the assessment from these campaigns, it is not expected that the installation of the RBE will affect the overall turbine lifetime.
Filed Under: Blades, O&M
