Improving turbine reliability and uptime is critical to reducing wind generator's Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and remaining competitive in today’s renewable market. While in the past, much of operator’s focus has been on improving the design and operation of gearbox assemblies in order to reduce downtime, there is significant opportunity to reduce maintenance requirements and life-cycle costs by improving pitch control system design.
According to industry data, pitch control system failures account for nearly a quarter of all downtime in wind turbines. A typical pitch system today consists of over 2,000 parts. Reducing that number through system design optimization as well as improved design of drive electronics, motors, and back-up power assemblies can significantly reduce failure rates, lower maintenance costs, and improve turbine reliability.
Join us for a discussion on how the LCOE for a Wind Turbine can be reduced by improving pitch system reliability and reducing unscheduled maintenance through advanced design.
Presented by
Prasad Padman,
Marketing Director Industrial Solutions, Moog
Mr. Prasad Padman has over 20 years of experience in the Power Generation industry, and has worked in a number of countries including India, China, Singapore and the United States of America. Prasad graduated from Bharathiyar University in India with a First Class degree in Instrumentation and Control Engineering. He also has an Executive MBA from SPJ Institute of Management in Finance and Marketing. After his studies he spent 14 years with Westinghouse Electric and now with Moog for the past 8 years in various roles. Prasad is responsible for mapping wind turbine operator needs and has lead projects to design and develop next generation solutions to increase turbine's output and reduce the cost of energy.
Erika Echavarria,
Senior Engineer, DNV GL
Erika has 14 years of involvement in the wind energy industry. She is part of the System Engineering team, under the DNV GL Turbine Engineering group in the Netherlands. Her work is mainly conceptual studies on onshore and offshore Operation & Maintenance, economic trade-off between the cost of unreliability and Capital Expenditures, and failure mitigating actions based on fault tolerance and redundancy implementation in wind turbine design. Her previous work was as a PhD student at Delft University of Technology (TUD) on reliability and fault tolerance design, towards improving availability of wind turbines. Before joining TUD, she worked as a project engineer in the United States of America, where she gained experience in the overall process of onshore wind farm developments.
Francesco Vanni,
Senior Engineer, Asset Integrity & Performance, DNV GL
Francesco Vanni is a Senior Engineer in the Asset Integrity and Performance department where he is involved in several aspects of operational monitoring of wind and solar farms, condition monitoring and benchmarking. He has worked for GL Garrad Hassan, now part of DNV GL, since 2011. In his previous role as control algorithm designer he has been involved in many commercial and research jobs in the areas of onshore and offshore wind, both fixed and floating, and of tidal energy, as well as in the delivery of internal and external training. His previous experience is in control of gas turbine engines for the aerospace sector and in academic research on autonomous vehicles. He holds an MSc in Aeronautics from Politecnico di Milano and an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from IST Lisbon. Francesco is a chartered member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
