If you’ve invested in wind power for your business, you’ve made the right choice. A wind turbine can greatly improve your business’s energy efficiency, and you’ll be doing your bit to protect the planet to boot.
Like any expensive piece of outdoor technology, however, your new turbine will need constant maintenance.
Given their size and the fact that they’re always being exposed to the elements, the need for repairs will be inevitable, but there are a number of tools you can use to make maintenance more manageable. In this article, you’ll learn about the best ones!
- Advanced Lubrication Systems
The components of your wind turbine need to be lubricated to work properly. Turbines don’t have many moving parts, but there are still gears and bearings to consider that are under constant load.
Without adequate lubrication, friction will cause these parts to wear down over time, which will ultimately result in the failure of the entire system.
Having an advanced lubrication system installed automates the process of applying lubrication when needed, reducing the number of maintenance callouts you’ll need for someone to do the job manually (which, naturally, can save you a lot of time and money!).
- Blade Condition Monitoring Systems
Your turbine’s blades are its most important feature, but they’re the area that’s most susceptible to wear and tear. Cracks and erosion are common due to weather conditions and just general degradation, and for this reason, wind turbine blade condition monitoring is essential.
These systems use a range of high-fidelity sensors to provide real-time data on the performance and condition of your turbine blades, so that you can identify a potential problem before it occurs (or react quickly to one that already has).
- Remote Monitoring
Given the size of these structures and the special training needed to scale them and check for problems, remoting monitoring systems can be a very useful asset.
A remote monitoring system enables you to analyze key data on how your turbine is performing and to do so with ease from any location. Some remote monitoring systems can also utilize the power of satellite remote sensing to obtain real-time imaging of the site.
As you can imagine, the ability to use big data for large-scale monitoring from afar can drastically improve efficiency, reduce costs, and importantly, increase the safety profile of your wind turbine. This technology is particularly useful if you have more than one turbine, or if your unit is located away from your main base of operations.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, this article has given you some food for thought for ways in which you can increase the longevity of your wind turbines. Each of the above primarily hinges on the premise of preventing a problem before it occurs; turbines are expensive enough as it is, but repairs can be a huge blow if you’re not prepared for it.
Keep your eyes peeled for future innovations – the space is constantly evolving, and there will no doubt be other ways of streamlining the process of maintaining these wonderful renewable energy sources to come.