Maintenance and Repair Strategy for Wind Energy Development

Project summary

In order to eradicate poverty, India needs to sustain an economic growth of at least 9% over the next 25 years. To ensure it, the primary energy supply has to increase at a rate of 5.8% annually. Wind energy in India grew very intensively in last decades, and is expected to grow even more extensively in the next decade. However, the reliability of the wind farm (which is high during the first year of operation) decreases with time decreases drastically beyond economical viability. Thus, it is critically important to ensure the long term service and reliability of wind turbines.

Maintenance and repair of wind turbines remain a strategic challenge for the development of wind energy, both in Europe and in India. The wind turbines installed in India face even larger maintenance challenges than those in Europe: monsoons, variations of temperatures, lack of experienced specialists.
The successful development of wind energy should therefore include the plan and technologies for the reliable protection, maintenance and repair of turbines. This project will create the necessary maintenance and repair know how, capacity and planning for the successful expansion of wind energy in India.
This project will develop a strategy of extending the wind turbine lifetime, including optimized surface protection against monsoon caused erosion, quick repair technologies, with mobile on-field repair kit for fast repair of blades, and a network of maintenance specialists collaborating and sharing experiences on optimal repair.
Wind turbines of first generation all around the world are approaching the end of warranty time and are subject to ageing. With the strategies and technologies developed in this project by cooperation of Danish and Indian scientists and industrial companies, the efficient repair and second life of wind turbines will be realized, thus, ensuring the reliable energy supply for Indian economy and society.

Outputs

Midterm report
The project develops according to the plan. The project results have lead to a number of publications in international journals (16 in total). The main results are: evaluation of often observed blade damage mechanisms and repair reasons; root causes of blade failure; development of wind turbine blade erosion model (most often observed erosion mechanism), development and testing of sustainable engineered blade coatings, testing and comparison of blade repair technologies, analysis of defects in repaired blades.