Many wind turbine towers are approaching the end of their design life, which is typically 20-30 years. However, by using the latest techniques and knowledge from structural health monitoring, it is possible to optimise the operation of the turbines and safely extend their lifetime, and thereby also the revenues.
IoTBridge, SM Teknik and researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology have joined forces to develop an integrated system for monitoring wind turbine towers, providing condition assessment, remaining life estimation, optimised operation and decision support.
The first wind turbine tower to be equipped with the monitoring and assessment system was the Långlöt Borgholm Wind Turbine on the Swedish island Öland. In May 2024, the team mounted accelerometers, inclinometers and strain gauges in strategic positions of the tower, in collaboration with owners Lundahl & Hall. Data from these sensors are now continuously streamed back to the IoTBridge cloud where the analytical engines are processing the data and correlating them with the energy production data (kWh, windspeed, active power, pitch angle, rotor speed, etc.) from the built-in SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system.
From now on, the machine learning system will find the optimal energy production level considering the structural health of the tower, thus ensuring a maximal utilisation of the wind turbine in terms of revenue and sustainability.
