UTB Faculty of Engineering

FAILURES IN WIND TURBINES

PRESENTED BY

DIEGO ANDRÉS PADILLA ZÚÑIGA T00050396

ALVARO ANTONIO ALVAREZ RAMIREZ T00046470
DANIEL ALVAREZ MERCADO T000

GROUP G

PRESENTED TO

GAYLORD ENRIQUE CARRILLO CABALLERO

2020-10

ENERGY CONVERSION (IMEC Z01A)

TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF BOLÍVAR – TECHNOLOGICAL

CAMPUS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PROGRAM

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS D. T. And C. MAY 18, 2020

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INTRODUCTION

Wind energy is one of the most important alternative energy sources because it is an
abundant, renewable and clean resource. Wind energy is fundamentally used to produce
electricity, this is achieved through wind turbines that work by converting the kinetic
energy of the wind into mechanical energy through propellers and subsequently into
electrical energy thanks to an alternator (alternating electric current generator). Wind
turbines are simple, robust and reliable machines, however, they are susceptible to
various mechanical, electrical and electronic problems that result in damage that can be
costly in terms of human lives, environmental impact and economic losses, for this reason,
it is advisable Know and analyze the different failure modes to establish measures that
help us avoid or minimize them.

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COMPONENTS OF A WIND TURBINE

Schematic of a wind turbine:

1. Soil
2. Connection to the electrical
network
3. Containment tower
4. Access ladder
5. Guidance system
6. Gondola
7. Generator
8. Anemometer
9. Brake
10. Transmission
11. Blades
12. Blade tilt system
13. Bushing

Illustration1 . Schematic of a wind turbine

FAILURES IN WIND TURBINES

The most common failures that wind turbines can suffer can be divided into two large
groups of breakdowns: small corrective, which are breakdowns that are normally resolved
in less than 24 hours and that produce small specific losses of production, and major
corrective, which includes breakdowns. serious in the main elements.

A wind turbine stops producing approximately 5% to 10% of the energy it could produce
due to various electrical or mechanical problems. Of these problems, 40% of the cases are
related to small correctives, 30% to large correctives or wide-ranging breakdowns, only

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10% to preventive activities (stops to carry out various inspections) and 20% are usually
related to incidents at the substation.

The little corrective

These are breakdowns that tend to occur very frequently and that can be solved in the
short term, so they do not entail a great cost or have a significant impact on energy
production. This small corrective affects the auxiliary elements that provide service to the
general components of the wind turbine. We are talking about the control system, the
blade orientation system, the braking system, the lubrication system or the nacelle
system. The small corrective also includes all stops due to instrumentation, that is, failures
in the measuring instruments that end up causing the wind turbine to stop. They are
usually quickly resolved by replacing the instrument, setting it up, replacing or repairing
the cable, or positioning the instrument correctly.

Electrical failures (electrical panel elements, cables, etc.) are also responsible for part of
the small corrective that can cause momentary stops. Regarding small mechanical
breakdowns, the solution of oil leaks (mainly due to seals or flexible hoses of the gearbox),
repairs to brakes, small repairs to hydraulic groups or replacement of one of the electric
motors that the wind turbine has ( for brake activation, for nacelle rotation, hydraulic
group pump motors, lubrication pump motors, etc.) are also among the small-scale
mechanical breakdowns.

The great corrective

It refers to the breakdown of a wind turbine in one of its main parts, resulting in a long-
term shutdown and resulting in a high repair cost. These main parts of the wind turbine
that can suffer serious breakdowns are: the rotor, made up of the blades and the main
shaft, the gearbox or the generator.

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Illustration2 . Breakdowns that most frequently affect wind turbines, according to a study carried
out by WordPress.

Breakdowns of the great corrective

Various breakdowns in blades: Lightning strike, structural damage (defects in the

manufacturing of the blades) and impact with objects or beings, especially birds.

Lightning tends to strike at the highest point, for this reason, wind turbines are a
natural target, due to both their height and elevated location. When lightning strikes,
an electric arc is created that extends from the point of contact through other
conductive components that can reach a temperature of 30,000º C. The result is an
explosive expansion of the air contained in the plastic that makes up the blade,
causing cracks and melting.

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Illustration3 . Damage to the blades caused by lightning.

In several wind turbine installation projects, it has not been taken into account that
the chosen location is a bird transit point. Birds that collide with the blades can cause
significant structural damage and at the same time be injured or, in the worst case,
killed. In addition, there is another deadly element for birds: lights. The lighting on the
top of the wind turbines, which serves to indicate their position to aircraft, attracts
these animals, and especially nocturnal birds, which end up flying towards them.

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Illustration4 . Wind and birds.

• In some windmills, cameras are being installed that detect the movement of birds, emit
a sound to keep them away and thus avoid collisions. And if, despite this noise, the bird
continues its trajectory, the system sends a signal to that wind turbine to stop.

• Suriol, together with David Yáñez and Raúl Martín, have designed a vertical conical
cylinder anchored to the ground by an elastic rod that, with the passage of air around it,
oscillates. And thanks to a system of coils and magnets, it allows the generation of
electricity with that movement.

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Illustration5 . Bladeless mills.

 Scientists at Loughborough University (UK) have discovered that a simple color change
in the decoration of wind turbines could make a big difference in the number of
insects that are attracted to them. They suggest that painting wind turbines violet or
purple will drastically reduce the number of insects they attract, and, therefore, the
bats and birds that come after them.

Illustration6 . Wind turbine painted purple.

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 Damage to the rotor assembly : Cracks in the slow shaft and various failures in the
main bearing of the slow shaft. All these damages are fundamentally related to
deformations or problems on its surface (breaks, cracks, etc.). Sometimes these
breakdowns involve lowering the rotor assembly to the surface in order to fix it.

Bearing failure Broken bearing Lubrication failure Excess lubricant

Illustration7 . Mechanical failures .

 Failures in the multiplier : Which is the main element and the main concern of those
responsible for the maintenance of a wind farm. It can present two types of
breakdowns: failures in the gear pinions (deformations, fractures or superficial
problems) or problems that may appear in the bearings.

Illustration8 . Degradation of sprockets.

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Cavitation

Oil bubbles often occur if the reservoir is small in relation to the system's oil demand.
The bubbles will not have time to float to the surface and leave the oil before being
sucked back into the pump. Air can also enter the system through damaged pumps or
cracked pipes. Air is often introduced into the system when replacing components. Air
can be removed by bleeding or purging. The presence of air in large quantities can lead
to the destruction of the pumps due to the cavitation effect. When the air bubbles are
pressurized, they explode. When the bubbles explode, the oil quickly implodes,
creating pressures of up to 400 bars. If the implosion takes place near the body of the
pump, damage may occur.

A pump can become completely unusable after just a few minutes of operation with
cavitation.

Illustration9 . Air in the oil.

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Illustration10 . Wear caused by cavitation in a centrifugal pump impeller.

Illustration11 . Another example of wear caused by cavitation in a centrifugal pump impeller.

Corrosion

Because these structures are in the sea for long periods of time, they suffer serious
corrosion problems. The part of the structure with the most corrosion problems is the
splash zone. In this area, seawater hits the structure with force, causing corrosion and
erosion damage. Due to the large number of wind turbines installed at sea and the
complexity of repairing them, maintenance costs are very high.

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Illustration12 . Off-shore turbine with corrosion in its tower.

Scientists from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav) made
ceramic coatings to reduce the corrosion of the metal structures of offshore wind
turbines, to extend their useful life. The coating is developed through a ceramic called
silicon carbide (SiC), which is stable in marine conditions.

Illustration13 . Percentage of stops in the mechanical system, Palomarejo .

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 Serious faults in the generator : Typical problems related to the rotor, shaft, bearings
or stator windings.

 Failures in the transformer (located at the rear of the wind turbine): Breakdowns in
the winding communication, breakage of one of the windings, contamination or even
fire of the transformer.

Short in stator Short in rotor Rotor cable failure Magnetic wedge failure

Wound rotor taping failure

Illustration14 . Electrical failures.

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Illustration15 . Burned electronic equipment.

In electrical equipment it is important to perform thermography since hot spots can be

detected that could lead to failures and breakdowns in the future.

Illustration16 . Thermography.

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Illustration17 . Percentage of stops in the electrical system.

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES

 Adequate maintenance plan following manufacturer's instructions

 Use of legitimate spare parts (it is advisable to have a stock of critical spare parts)
 Control of ground discharge systems
 Oil analysis and/or online particle control in oils
 Taking specific vibrations and/or continuous monitoring and recording at critical
points, axes
 and multiplier box
 Take grease samples from main bearings
 Thermography
 Megado (insulation control test)
 Supervision of hot work permits, at height, in confined spaces, between
 others.
 Regular inspections of wind turbines, transformers, substations and others
 auxiliary systems

TECHNOLOGICAL RELIABILITY EVALUATION OF THE GIBARA WIND TURBINE PARK

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The following example of a study of failures in wind farms is obtained from an article
where the reliability of the Gibara 2 park located in Cuba is analyzed. It is intended that
through the understanding of this there is the ability to put it into practice in future labor
or al problems. less understand the importance and relevance of the results in the analysis
of wind generation systems and the derivation that arises from there to propose technical
solutions that impact the mechanical, electrical, electronic and administrative field. The
document essentially addresses the identification of the main contributors to the
unavailability of the parks and the optimization of the maintenance policy.

Technological reliability evaluation of the Gibara 2 wind turbine park

The main objective is to carry out the reliability analysis of the Gibara 2 wind farm using
the fault tree methodology and recommend some possible applications of its results.
The interest of the research is to focus the future bases for the optimal analysis of these
systems, allowing more security when implementing them since a growing demand is
expected caused by the depletion of fossil resources over the years.
The fronts that comprise the reliability analyzes on wind farms are:

 The investigation of failure histories for different component parts of wind turbines
or for complete machines [1, 3].
 Specific applications for risk analysis [4, 5].
 Probabilistic analysis of meteorological variables [6].
 The current state of computer codes intended for reliability analysis using fault
trees.
 The availability of failure records of component parts of these machines collected
for more than 4 years in the Gibara park [Ministry of Energy and Mines, Gibara
Wind Farm Database 2, 2012].
 Worldwide statistical information [1].

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The Gibara 2 wind farm uses Goldwind brand wind turbines, model S50/750 of 750 kW
and were developed from a model of equal power from the German technologist and
manufacturer REPower [7,8].

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Figure 1. General diagram of the Goldwind brand wind turbine: 1- Support, 2-

Rotor, 3- Main shaft, 4- Lighting system, 5- Gear oil cooling system, 6-
Multiplier box, 7- Brakes, 8- Hitch, 9 -Generator, 10-Chain elevator, 11-
Weather vane, Anemometer, 12- Base frame, 13- Nacelle, 14- Power cable, 15-
Slewing ring, 16- Slewing mechanism.

The method used for the reliability analysis of the wind farm will be the fault tree. This
enters the zero level among the Probabilistic Safety Analysis (PSA), and consists
particularly of the reliability analysis of Components and Systems. Only separate systems
are analyzed and not the accidental sequences that could occur between them. Thus, the
failure probabilities of components, their failure combinations and the failure probability
of the total system are determined. In addition, the causes of failures ordered by
importance are included [6].
There are two essential methods of data collection used here:

 Active method
It is expensive so it is used essentially in capital-intensive industries such as the
aeronautical and aerospace industries. Here numerous pieces of equipment are tested
and investigated until they fail, the results are tallied and classified for a certain failure
mode. The records obtained are processed and adjusted to determine the rates or
probabilities of failures relative to the objects under study. The devices are from the same

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designer and manufacturer and have identical characteristics and operating regimes, so
they become what is known as a family.

 Passive method.
Statistical information is collected on failures in the processes that occur within a facility
under study.

The method used here is the active one. The fault trees presented here segregate the
wind turbine into its main parts. There is not enough data to segregate the main parts into
their components. Furthermore, they have been grouped by parks with similar
technology, and within them different failure criteria have been considered. For the
Gibará 2 park under investigation, the failure criterion adopted will be: 2 of 6 wind
turbines with a power of 750 kW. This criterion aims to limit the permitted unavailability
of the park to one wind turbine, which means that the operating policy must be restricted
to the out-of-service of only one machine at a time (whether due to planned maintenance
or random causes of failure).
To identify the component elements of each machine, it was necessary to make the
information compatible where the following sources were taken into account:

 Structural data of the wind turbines (Goldwind for Gibara 2).

 Component-segregated failure data for wind turbines [1].
 Failure data collected at the Gibara wind turbine park by alarm code.

Given the annual global failure rate reported, as well as the contribution fractions that
correspond to each component of the wind turbine, annual rates could be deduced for
each component, as a generic failure rate. Due to the variety of technologies represented,
it was considered that this average rate value is applicable to Goldwind machines. On the
other hand, the detailed analysis of the failure records reported by the Gibara 2 park
showed that they were not prepared in an adequate format for the proposed task, which
forced the design of a particular procedure for their use, with the objective of obtain
specific failure rates per component. This included:
1) Classification of failures by their corresponding park.
2) Segregation and analysis by type/cause 1, 2 and 3 (SEN, maintenance and rest,
respectively)
3) Study of the State group (Errors or Emergency – Stop) and Cause (Alarm –
Unknown) by keywords according to description.

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4) Accounting of keywords and addition to the associated device, or times out of

service, if it is SEN cause-types and maintenance.
5) Calculation of failure rates (for Type/cause 3) or unavailability (for Type/cause 1
and 2).

Equation (1) was used to calculate the failure rate.

NF
λanual= (1)
Tobserv
Where:
λannual = Specific annual failure rate.
NF = Number of failures reported in the period.
Tobserv = Observation time (in hours).
Finally, from the comparison between the generic and specific failure rates, the highest
one was deduced, which was the one used in the analysis. Other data to take into account
were the contributions of unavailability associated with external events of an
anthropogenic or natural nature.
Equation (2) was used for the analysis of unavailability due to maintenance, external
events and associated with the electrical system, that is, due to external causes.
Tindisxmaq
Q= (2)
Tobserv
Where:
Q = Unavailability
Tindisxmaq = Unavailability time per machine

RESULTS

1) The fault tree for the Gibara 2 wind farm system is shown in Figure 3.
2) The Machine # fault subtree, represented in Figure 3, is repeated for each machine
by replacing the # character with the corresponding number of the modeled wind
turbine.
3) The reliability database used in the study is shown in Table 1.
4) The reliability data applied to each component corresponded, fundamentally, to
those obtained from the site-specific source.

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Figure 2. Fault tree for Gibara 2 wind turbine park.

Applying the appropriate reliability models to each case, and using the failure rates
reported in the table, the failure probabilities associated with each component were
determined. A fragment of the results for the first minimum cut sets (minimum
combinations of component failure leading to park failure - CMC) obtained for the Gibara
2 park is shown in figures 4 and 5.

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Figure 3. Results for the first minimum cut sets (CMC).

Figure 4. Histogram of results by CMC.

By applying the Fussell-Vesely importance measure (measure of contribution to system

failure by component - FV), Figure 6 is obtained; which represented graphically illustrates
what is shown in figure 7:

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Figure 5. Ordering by PV importance for the Gibara 2 park.

Figure 7. Histogram by PV importance for Gibara 2 park.

With the aim of facilitating optimization applications to the design or operation of the
park, the modeling of only one of the machines has been carried out. Logically, the results
for the remaining machines will be symmetrical to the one shown. The fundamental basis
of this application was the minimum cut set table, which in this case coincides with the FV
importance table. In this case, the resulting unavailability was around 20% (1.9E-1) for
each wind turbine. In order to prepare the model for subsequent comparisons, a version

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of it was developed eliminating the contributions of the network and meteorological

phenomena, obtaining in this case an unavailability of 1.3 E-1, that is, 13% for a wind
turbine. . Given the limited complexity of the study, it was not necessary to use other
analysis tools to optimize the results. To illustrate the ordering of the taxpayers, the
histogram in Figure 8 is presented.

Fig. 8. Histogram of contributors by FV importance for a machine.

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CONCLUSION

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REFERENCES

[1] https ://idus.us.es/bitstream/handle/11441/51097/memoria.pdf?

sequence=1&isAllowed= and
[2] http://opex-energy.com/eolica/principales_averias_eolica . html
[3] https://www.lea-global.com/uploads/circulares/2017/08/05-17-riesgos-en-
aerogeneradores . pdf
[4] http://www.renovetec.com/irim/ 14-revista-irim-6/272-averias-mayores-y-menores-
en- aerogeneradores
[5] https ://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wind turbine
[6] https://www.lavanguardia.com/natural/20160729/403487721857/molino-eolico-
evita-muerte-aves . html
[ 7 ] http://energiasrenovablesmarinas.blogspot.com/2019/04/corrosion-y-biofouling-
en-la-eolica.html
[ 8 ] http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1815-59012016000100004

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