Your letters for Dec. 6, 2024
By NewsPress Now
Your letters for Dec. 6, 2024
Wind mills more good news?
Oil and hydraulic fluid deterioration leads to critical failures. Other areas that cause oil leakages include deteriorating seal rings, blocked oil filters, and if oil pressure is too high, pipe ruptures can occur.
Another problem that occurs inevitably is the contamination of gear oil and/ or lubrication, which increases in dustier conditions. Dust will mix into tight spaces (like bearings) and acts as an abrasive, wearing away critical components via micro pitting. Turbines have oil filtering or servicing to make sure there is minimal disruption, but in some cases, pitting can gradually lead to oil leaks and catastrophic failures.
As soon as turbines start to leak oil, this is an immediate trigger to much more serious issues. When oil levels in gearboxes drop below a certain level, this can jam gears, causing cracks that in the worst-case scenario can destroy a whole turbine.
Servicing is very difficult: Wind turbines require regular maintenance, but this is made harder by their remoteness and scale. Specialized engineers must be able to get to the top of each 100m turbine, which is considerably harder offshore. Also, if parts need replacing, industrial cranes need to be brought to site.
All parts are self-sufficient. This allows them to be serviced once every 6 to 12 months, as they improve? The indirect but costly impacts of wind turbine oil leaks
If oil leaks happen, they can cause a lot of environmental damage. Oil can contaminate farmlands and forests, and becomes particularly problematic when it spreads into groundwater, or worse — into the sea from offshore turbines. Once these chemicals enter water sources, they are hard to track and can spiral into other social, health and livestock issues.
As well as the detrimental impacts on the environment, the cost of a wind turbine’s downtime is economically significant. Gearboxes are the most likely source of issues and an average 2MW turbine gearbox costs from US$2-4M. Why is the current oil leak detection market insufficient? Oil leaks can still go undetected. The major shortfalls the wind turbine market has in detecting oil leaks that can lead to detrimental consequences.
Market demand: Wind farm owners usually sign service agreements for their wind turbines to ensure their infrastructure is under warranty whilst being serviced regularly. Service providers are responsible for diagnosing wind turbines of any apparent issues and predicting possible expenses throughout the turbines’ life.
Wind turbine maintenance technicians: Service providers usually hire third-party contractors to tend to potential wind turbine faults. Insurers of wind farms-with the many stakeholders involved in a wind farm’s operation means that it can be difficult for insurers to know how to plan well-informed policies for wind farm owners. Their trajectory to achieving reliable energy production, however, depends on whether wind turbines can adopt the use of smart sensors to predict when maintenance is required. The fact that site inspections only happen one or two times a year may mean oil leaks can be left to escalate.
Ben Pecora
St. Joseph
