Wind Energy
1. Unforeseen and enhanced wind turbine failure rates, mostly in newer and bigger models, are mangling 'wind energy' revenues?
2. Whether wind projects would remain to be cost-competitive in those locations that are not windy enough?
3. How easy would it remain to bring electricity from wind farms to urban areas – with most ideal wind sites being located in remote locations?
4. How easy to repair a complex electromechanical and hydraulic wind turbine?
How about the maintenance of wind turbines?
Total repair budgets keep growing exponentially?
Leading edge erosion soon after the installation of wind turbine?
5. With nearly 1,000,000 blades in operation globally, on an average, are we facing nearly 10,000 incidents of blade failure every year?
If so, whether the turbine failures are on the ascending trend across the globe (along with blades falling off and sometimes, even, full turbine getting collapsed)?
6. Extraordinary events such as ‘lightning strikes’ (one of the main causes of wind power outages) and bird impacts have become a routine phenomenon (leaving aside transportation damage)?
7. Fires in wind turbines are the 2nd leading cause of accidents after blade failure (following lightning damage) and are ahead of structural failure?
8. In the rush to decarbonize the power supply, whether the concept of ‘wind droughts’ was not given due weightage?
How about the wind drought warnings by meteorologists?
9. With power converters being among the most frequently failing components of wind turbines, have we advanced successfully in producing efficient power-electronic converters associated with variable-speed wind turbines?
10. With the advancements in materials, manufacturing and design techniques, and operations and maintenance tools, how long a typical 15 MW offshore wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 250 m would survive in the absence of any repairing work (for generators, or, gearboxes, or turbine blades)?
Can rotor blade arcs extend up to 100m?
11. How easy would it remain to have a precise control over excessive vibration, voltage fluctuations, faulty cooling systems and mechanical/electrical bearing failure - associated with the malfunctioning of generators (resulting from wind loads, severe weather or thermal cycling) that could probably lead to excessive heat and fire?
Similarly, can we have a precise control that would probably avoid the gearbox failure resulting from dirty/water-contaminated lubricant, incorrect bearing settings, (significant) temperature variations, & transient loads causing abrupt accelerations and load-zone reversals?
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