GEV Wind Power, a division of the GEV Group, is launching its pioneering turbine maintenance structure at this year’s RenewableUK show.
Visitors to the show will be the first to experience the structure in action through GEV’s virtual reality simulation, enabling attendees to access the platform, be cocooned in the transparent habitat and undertake their own blade repair.
GEV’s innovative habitat structure will dramatically reduce the number of cancelled ‘down’ days which currently blight the industry, over 50% of which result from adverse weather conditions.
David Fletcher, managing director of the GEV Group comments: “Habitat structures have worked well in the oil and gas sector for many years and we decided to migrate the idea across to offshore wind.
“Wind speeds, rain, temperature and humidity all significantly impact on an engineer’s ability to complete scheduled maintenance. However, when you also factor in the length of time it takes to physically get an engineer out to a wind farm, which is often a round trip of several hours, the window of opportunity available to undertake any maintenance is very narrow indeed. Our new offshore habitat structure will mitigate the weather risk and enable engineers, once on-site, to work unhindered in a controlled environment.”
GEV Wind Power plans to undertake field trials in Q1 2015, and is then looking to partner with turbine manufacturers with a view to including the habitat structure as an integral element of next generation turbines.
David Fletcher continues: “Our habitat structure has the potential to transform offshore wind maintenance operations. It will provide a massive step forward in meeting the needs of both field owners who want to maximise power generation during perceived bad periods of weather, usually October through to April, and stakeholders, who want to reduce non-productive costs from lost days due to weather stand down.”
GEV Wind Power has partnered with VisiDeck, a leading provider of virtual reality and visualisation solutions to produce its demonstration, which will be debuted at RenewableUK.
Andy Yelland, VisiDeck’s managing director , comments: “Virtual reality will officially be released to consumers next year, and will revolutionise many industries. For GEV Wind Power it was naturally impractical to ship a turbine to the show. With our pre-release VR headsets, we can let visitors experience first-hand riding to the top of a wind turbine and see the habitat structure in action, all from the comfort of the exhibition.”
David Fletcher concludes: “We hope our virtual reality simulation will give visitors to RenewableUK a real insight into our habitat’s potential, and we’re very much looking forward to field trials and bringing this much needed product to market.”
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Press release