Researchers at the Brunel University London’s Innovation Center are developing WindTwin, a digital platform that enables live condition checks on each wind turbine’s working parts, for which the Brunel team says it would significantly contribute to cutting offshore O&M costs.
WindTwin will feed data from sound sensors on the turbines’ gearbox, generator and other mechanical parts into a 3D virtual model or ‘digital twin’ that predicts which need fixing and when. That lets companies scrap scheduled maintenance and replace or repair broken parts before they do damage.
Dr Miltiadis Kourmpetis at Brunel Innovation Centre said: “The data this software generates has huge potential benefits for the wind turbine industry.”
Brunel’s researchers said savings achieved by using WindTwin could be vast, considering that operating 5,500 offshore turbines by 2025 could cost GBP 2 billion annually, according to Crown Estate’s report from 2013.
“Our goal is to develop digital models or clones of a wind turbine which combine mathematical models describing the physics of the turbine’s operation, with sensor data from actual parts during day-to-day running. These virtual models will allow wind farm operators to predict failure and plan maintenance, reducing maintenance costs and downtime,” Kourmpetis said.
The digital twin platform will use big data analytics and advanced visualisation and analysis to draw a real-time picture of the turbine’s condition, which will help maintain and optimise real wind turbines, cutting upkeep costs by up to 30%, researchers calculate. Early breakdown detection will up reliability by as much as 99.5% and reduce losses from downtime by 70%. It also lets workers monitor and control entire wind farms digitally and remotely.
The Brunel Innovation Centre team working on WindTwin will target parts for monitoring and use their own machine learning algorithms to crunch the data. They will also identify sensors needed to track faults.
Brunel University London is working on the GBP 1.4 million 30-month WindTwin project with experts including Agility3, ESI and TWI. Funded by the government’s Innovate UK, they plan to sell the digital twin platform worldwide and look at how other industries could use it.