F'IS: Large-scale condition monitoring order from Australian wind industry

Pacific Hydro buys 49 FAG WiPro systems and monitoring service for wind farms in Victoria – remote monitoring of wind turbines by CMSA headquarters in Adelaide

Herzogenrath, March 23, 2006 – Pacific Hydro Limited, Australia’s leading supplier of renewable energies with a focus on water and wind, has awarded CMSA (Condition Monitoring Services Australia Pty Ltd), the Australian service subsidiary of FAG Industrial Services GmbH (F’IS), a large order for 49 condition monitoring systems of type FAG WiPro (Wind Turbine Protection). This is the biggest success scored to date by CMSA, which was acquired by the Schaeffler Group at the beginning of the year and was already a certified F’IS service partner back then. The order does not only include the systems themselves but also remote monitoring and analysis of the data by the condition monitoring experts at CMSA headquarters in Adelaide. By securing this order, CMSA did not only prevail under enormous competitive pressure but has also consolidated its position in the quickly growing renewable energy market in Australia.

The 49 online systems will be used for permanent condition monitoring in the two wind farms Codrington and Challicum Hills in the Australian state of Victoria. In all turbines, especially the generator bearings, gearbox and main rotor bearings are monitored. Via modern telecommunication systems, the service team at CMSA headquarters in Adelaide has permanent access to the data measured by the monitoring systems. The customer is kept informed by means of monthly reports. If any of the individually adjustable standard values is exceeded, an alarm is triggered automatically, and the customer is informed at once. The team of analysts in Adelaide provides support in the form of suggestions regarding necessary maintenance and repair measures and, if necessary by sending its own service technicians. Thanks to this monitoring concept, the customer not only has its turbines well under control at any time; early detection of problems makes it possible to plan the required maintenance work much more efficiently. Especially in the wind industry, this argument is increasingly gaining in importance as maintenance itself requires a complex and costly logistic process – such as providing heavy-lift cranes, often in very rough ground.

One crucial factor in the customer’s decision to buy the system was the successful test installation of a number of WiPro units in one of Pacific Hydro’s wind farms. Apart from automatic condition monitoring, the WiPro system offers a whole number of benefits, including the fact that the amount of data per turbine can be kept small without losing any damage-relevant information. This makes it particularly suitable for monitoring a major number of turbines in wind farms.

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