Training for Wind Energy Instructors on Wind Turbine technologies

Instructors in Technical Colleges and Vocational Training Centers face an important challenge when training students on actual Wind Turbines.

Fortunately, the technologies of many components in a Wind Turbine are common to other industries, so they may use the experience on other industries for the training. What is particular, in actual industrial grade Wind Turbines, is related to the fact that they are designed as stand-alone production plants: therefore, is not enough to show how to repair and/or replace a given component, it is necessary also to show why that failure arose, what were the causes, and the series of events that ended in that failure. Also, as  the work has to be done in a dangerous environment (at height, narrow and confined places, high heat dissipation, high voltages, etc.) it is important for the student to have a environment where all the possible situations (some very dangerous) can be explored, and which are the protocols embedded in the Wind Turbine Controller to deal with them.

Our Real Time Simulators and the associated Tutorials, are designed to solve these problems: they constitute practical workbenches where the student may visualize the evolution of external and internal signals of the Wind Turbine under normal working conditions, as well as under special conditions (very high winds, Grid losses, elevated temperatures, hydraulic pressure losses, etc.) and also when there are failures in the Wind Turbine : in the Pitch mechanism, in the brakes hydraulic system, in the yaw system.

The ‘Training Course for Instructors makes a throughout explanation of all this material, and guides on the practical ‘Teaching sessions’ that can be used by the students.

Training for Wind Farm SCADA Data Analysis

The data recorded in the Wind Farm SCADA come from many sources:

• The Wind Turbines.
• The Meteorological Station in the Wind Farm.
• Forecasted wind speeds.
• Planned production.
• The Grid

They normally include additional information: response to incidences, blackouts, maintenance operations, etc.

The bulk of these data are related to the evolution of wind speed, power production, pitch angles, nacelle orientation, generator temperature, hydraulic pressures, etc. These data are coming from the Wind Turbines a very low sampling rate, typically between 2 minutes and 10 minutes. Unfortunately, many problems may happen in a Wind Turbine inside a single sample period, and therefore these data are not suitable for root case analysis of them.

Fortunately, analyzing these data with a deep knowledge of the components in the Wind Turbine, and how they work together, it is possible to deduce meaning conclusions about ‘what happened’ and ‘how it happened’. This knowledge is crucial for Predictive Maintenance, with many implications in the maintenance planning, spare parts logistics, production planning, etc.