There is dire need for the system certification of condition monitoring, mostly because current CMS vendors offer at least nine different approaches for basic sensor selection and placement.
Condition monitoring: There is really only one right way
David Clark / President / CMS Wind Condition monitoring gets accolades outside the wind industry because of the value it brings to lowering O&M costs. Here’s why many in the wind industry come up short. Suppose you have recently realized the cost justification for condition monitoring. Influencing the decision is that other vertical markets already…
Prepping your wind farm for condition monitoring
David Clark Wind Consultant El Dorado Hills, Calif. Here’s a little secret: You can probably use anyone’s condition monitoring on a single turbine and get data good enough to predict basic failures. But expand the monitoring scope to several turbines or multiple sites and everything changes. To cost justify outfitting a 100-turbine farm…
Misalignment, looseness, and imbalance are all correctable problems
While condition monitoring technologies can track many signals, its purpose boils down to detecting wear and preventing the eventual failure of monitored components. Not all megawatt-class wind turbine drivetrains are monitored with the intent to catch degrading components. A few frequently encountered conditions are not caused by wear, making them correctable. These conditions, when left…