STTR Phase I: Enhancing wind-energy industry competitiveness using self-powered blade monitoring sensors

该小型企业技术转让（STTR）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力旨在为风力涡轮机叶片提供集成的监测解决方案。叶片内的连续和可靠的监测一直是一个挑战，主要是由于缺乏用于无线传感器的可靠能量（例如，电池需要更换，并且可能是昂贵的，并且在刀片内部更换在逻辑上是困难的，并且刀片内部的电源线难以安装并且需要频繁维护）。所提出的解决方案旨在通过提供用于风力涡轮机叶片监测和分析的持久、免维护、自供电的集成解决方案来克服当前的技术挑战。如果成功商业化，该解决方案可以部署用于基于大数据分析的自主感知和智能维护调度。该项目可能有助于显著和永久地降低现有刀片监控成本，减少手动监控和电池更换的停机时间，并通过更好的监控信息减少灾难性故障。通过降低运营成本，该解决方案可以使大规模风能更具竞争力，减少世界对环境有害能源的依赖。此外，与目前的操作过程相比，该技术可以降低对人类造成伤害的风险，使风能更安全地运行。该STTR第一阶段项目旨在通过克服以下技术障碍，开发一种用于风力涡轮机叶片监测的集成自供电传感器节点：叶片内部深处的传感器/发射器系统缺乏可靠的能量，以不同的间隔为大量传感器更换叶片内部的电池的后勤挑战，以及在叶片内部具有长的线运行的difficulites，因为这些难以安装并且需要频繁维护。为了克服这些技术障碍，该项目旨在建立一个集成的、自供电的无线传感器节点原型，并进行现场测试。该项目计划：（1）开发用于采集器模块的机制，其可靠地产生电压和功率而不管叶片旋转速度，（2）开发具有自主睡眠/唤醒并且没有阻抗跟踪的功率管理电路以增加充电效率，以及（3）执行室内和现场测试以验证功率采集和数据传输性能。该技术寻求解决振动能量采集器的根本弱点，同时集成各种部件（例如，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project seeks to provide an integrated monitoring solution for wind turbine blades. Continuous and reliable monitoring within the blade has been a challenge, primarily due to the lack of reliable energy for the wireless sensor (e.g., batteries need to be replaced and can be expensive and logistically difficult to replace inside the blade and power lines inside the blade are hard to install and require frequent maintenance). The proposed solution seeks to overcome current technical challenges by providing a long-lasting, maintenance-free, self-powered, integrated solution for wind turbine blade monitoring and analytics. If successfully commercialized, the solution can be deployed for autonomous sensing and smart maintenance scheduling based on big data analysis. This project may contribute to significantly and permanently reducing existing blade monitoring costs, decreasing downtime for manual monitoring and battery changes and reducing catastrophic failures with better monitoring information. By reducing the operational costs, the solution may make large-scale wind energy more competitive, reducing the world’s dependence on environmentally-harmful sources of energy. In addition, the technology may reduce the risk of injury to humans as compared to current operational processes, making wind energy safer to operate. This STTR Phase I project proposes to develop an integrated, self-powering sensor node for wind turbine blade monitoring by overcoming the following technical hurdles: lack of reliable energy for the sensor/transmitter system deep inside the blade, logistical challenges to replacing batteries inside the blade for a large number of sensors at different intervals, and difficulites with long wire-runs inside the blade as those are hard to install and require frequent maintenance. To handle these technical hurdles, this project aims to prototype an integrated, self-powered, wireless sensor node and perform field tests. This project plans to: (1) develop a mechanism for the harvester module that reliably produces electrical voltage and power regardless of the blade rotational speed, (2) develop a power management circuit with autonomous sleep/wakeup and without impedance tracking to increase charging efficiency, and (3) perform indoor and in-field test for verification of power harvesting and data transmission performance. This technolology seeks to address the fundamental weaknesses of vibration energy harvesters while integrating various components (e.g., energy harvester, sensor, transmitter, receiver, and analytics software) for an optimized solution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.