In this day and age when downtime prevention, maintenance and cost reductions are key, remote surveillance must be one of the top ways to improve all three. PES went to find out the latest developments from Moventas who have remote surveillance centres in Finland, Italy, UK and the US to monitor over 2,500 wind turbines globally.
The Moventas Condition Management System (CMaS) gathers critical data on turbines in operation, which is analysed by a team of experts to help ward off unexpected failures. CMaS operates on all gearbox types. Thus Moventas provides surveillance for turbines deploying a range of different gearbox brands.
A broader view of the whole drivetrain with CMaS and its intelligent sensors
CMaS was developed to monitor how the gearbox and other drivetrain components in a wind turbine perform. It anticipates possible upcoming failures and it guarantees the continuity of their energy yield.
Traditional condition monitoring products focused mainly on measuring vibrations from rotating components. CMaS, on the other hand, is based on a profound understanding of the various failure modes of the drivetrain as whole. For example, it is possible for early changes in oil lubrication properties to be visible, long before they can be measured in vibration.
CMaS technologies were also developed to efficiently monitor large numbers of wind turbine drive trains, by using sophisticated analysing methods, algorithms, and intelligent sensors. Moventas has over 15 years’ experience with intelligent vibration sensors as the very first-generation vibration sensor went through prototype testing back in 2003.
Many traditional vibration sensors measure data passively, with the signal being transferred to a server based platform. The data is then processed, calculated and analysed on a separate main unit / server. Intelligent vibration sensors, used within the CMaS solution, can perform the measurements, data processing and analysis directly, with fast on board processor technology. This keeps the data transfer volume optimised and gives more efficient performance monitoring.
