Abstract
Recent works have addressed the analysis of some situations that alter the gearbox oil results in wind energy conversion systems (WECS). This work contributes by completing the analysis of additional situations, based on key operational data collected from 10 different multi-megawatt wind turbines at two different locations with two top-tier technologies, and has demonstrated that the oil analysis results can be altered in practice. As important as detecting these situations is to verify how the data collected by the different operators and transferred to the laboratories, this relevant information is not included in most cases. The issues that can stem from this lack of valuable data can be mitigated with a new and more complete template. This paper proposes a detailed template that is ready for an industrial use and contributes to standardizing the information handled by all actors. The suggested template, which is designed based on extensive experimental results and an in-depth analysis, provides detailed information for laboratories to improve conclusions, recommendations and action plans. The investigation provides a high archival value for researchers whose investigation deals with gearbox oil maintenance. Furthermore, the global impact of the proposal on the wind industry can be very relevant in terms of benefits and it will ultimately be an advance in the evolution of the operation and maintenance of wind farms.
Highlights
As a consequence of this oil brand replacement, the result of the 13 tests of new oil would be flagged as a “danger” considering that there are components such as molybdenum, zinc and magnesium that widely exceed the admissible ranges for this oil brand
The experimental results with a gearbox of a 2.5 MW turbine on five different occasions at a frequency of six months showed that the refill, with the intact properties of the new oil, generates a positive contamination that alters the evolution of the theoretical values in the oil analysis results and improves the general condition of the oil
The Operation and Maintenance (O&M) actions described in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 are analysed and discussed in the light of extensive experimental results
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Executed Gearbox Oil. Once the information exchanged between different companies/laboratories has been analysed, this section details different situations that may affect the results and how this knowledge could be used to predict some events in advance, completing the necessary study to propose a template that provides detailed information to laboratories to improve the conclusions, recommendations and action plans. These values include previous trends to detect possible behaviour patterns that, in a high percentage will end in damage, to tackle the problem in its earliest stages In this case, detailed information such as the cause of the incident, the oil level, possible particles in the metal particle detectors of the gearbox, or even warnings, alarms and information from the condition monitoring system (CMS) [35] would be important for the laboratories to be able to study in depth the type of relationships between the parameters of the physical-chemical analysis of the oil and the rest of the operational information. To improve the reliability, scope and precision in conclusions, it is necessary to use this information flow in reverse, in such a way that operational information helps oil analytics be part of the information used to make other decisions and be part of an integral process
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