Narec - Although turbine failure onshore can be costly, repairs are much easier to organise than with an offshore site. The costs and long-term set backs due to any wide, systemic failure of turbines at sea are huge and would have a major impact on the developing market.

Condition Monitoring

Although turbine failure onshore can be costly, repairs are much easier to organise than with an offshore site. The costs and long-term set backs due to any wide, systemic failure of turbines at sea are huge and would have a major impact on the developing market.

For the new remote sites, condition monitoring will play an important role in monitoring the performance of wind farms and Narec is supporting the industry in the development of new monitoring systems.

O&M Issues

The number of turbines required for the UK’s Round 3 targets alone is staggeringly large – up to 5000 turbines with capacities in the 3 – 5MW range will be needed.  Over 800 turbines could be deployed in the largest site in the North Sea, 150km off the North East coast.  If farms on such a scale are to be deployed, operated and maintained then the transfer of offshore industry and know-how will be vital.

Our mechanical, electrical and control engineers; wind and marine specialists work with developers of technologies to mitigate the risks of taking devices offshore, while speeding up the process towards field deployment.

Lightning strike

With the expansion of wind generation offshore, electrical networks are required to connect these remote generation resources and Narec is working with the industry in the development of offshore electrical network infrastructure.

These new sites will be susceptible to lightning strikes and at our ultra high voltage (UHV) laboratory we generate 4MV lightning impulses to verify the designs of wind turbine lightning protection systems (on both the blades and nacelles).  This extreme test rig has 18 electrical stages, each of which is charged to 200 kV and fired in series to generate the lightning impulse voltage waveform.

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Solutions for Business ONE North East ERDF European Regional Development Funding Department of Energy and Climate Change Department for Business Innovation and Skills