Tales of Wind #5 - Nordex – Ice detection upgrade (9*N90 Gamma wind farm)

Greensolver is operating a Nordex wind farm North of France equipped with 2 substations and 9 wind turbines N90 Gamma on behalf of a UK fund.

This wind farm is subject to ice condition during the winter and thus many turbine stops and loss of production. The wind turbines were initially equipped with the Labkotek ice detection system, which is the per default system for Gamma platforms. Two major drawbacks characterize this system :

• Unprecise → Detection too conservative that leads to maximization of turbine stops.
• No possibility for remote restart → Once the labkotek detected ice conditions, the turbine is shut down and the only way to restart it is manually on site. Even when ice conditions are over, no remote restart is made possible by the system. This drives up the duration of ice stops as being reliant of the availability of Nordex technician teams to intervene on site.

This functioning lead Greensolver to explore an upgrade of the ice detection system that would reduce loss of production substantially. Nordex proposed an upgrade labelled as RBID or IDD, consisting in the installation of vibration sensors in the blades connected to a controller sending commands to the turbine controller. The IDD system is not only more precise in the detection but also enables remote restart from an operator, limiting the duration of Ice stops considerably.

Greensolver performed the case study to validate the interest of installing the system on two wind turbines (E3 & E8)

The results are satisfying as the system was profitable within 3 years of operations, with an annual gain of 30k€.
Below can be observed the duration of ice stops on E3 and E8 relative to other turbines:

Written by Technical and Financial Asset Management Team