AIMWind project is fully funded by the Research Council of Norway under IKTPluss-IKT og Digital Innovasjon. Project No. 312486
Project Overview
Generally, wind turbines are designed to operate for 20-25 years. The stipulation assumes that the wind turbine will experience wind loads high enough to cause significant wear through this time that is evenly distributed over all turbines. Research shows that the wear over time can widely vary since wind is an uncertain source of energy and thus loading is unevenly distributed over the turbines. Therefore, not all turbines in a large wind farm will reach end-of-life after 25 years of operation. Thousands of wind turbines in Europe reach this stipulated lifetime in the coming decades. Which of these turbines have remaining useful life? Can we continue operating those turbines safely? These are the questions AIMWind will strive to answer.
AIMWind will equip wind turbines with new technologies that assess wear and ageing, and adapt windfarms operations to bring holistic improvements to their longevity and profitability during their design life and beyond.
Summary
The AIMWind project will take a three-pronged approach towards improving the profitability and life of wind farms: i) advanced condition monitoring and prognostics techniques will be developed to detect early faults and determine the remaining useful life, rigorously and continuously; ii) the power of big data and data analytics will be leveraged to combine multiple sources of information such as the operations, condition monitoring data, weather conditions and inspection data to identify the health status of the wind turbine and windfarm; iii) novel control methodologies will be developed that take into account the present health status and adapt the operations to achieve dual objectives of sustained health and efficiency.
The project is a collaborative research effort from University of Agder, Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE) and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands and DNV in an advisory role.
Project details in Norwegian
