Reliability analysis, diagnosis and prognosis of direct drive and medium speed generators

海上风能的增长是英国当前和未来能源结构的一个重要特征。风能现在是英国和全球的主流能源发电方式。仅在英国，近年来海上风能行业就安装了大约8GW或大约2000台海上涡轮机。海上风能行业令人印象深刻的增长速度部分是由政府政策和补贴推动的。对于英国海上风能产业来说，要达到最近的执行价格并最终实现无补贴，海上风能发电的成本必须继续下降。此外，最近的CCC NetZero报告呼吁在未来几年内安装高达75GW的海上风能。如果要达到CCC的目标，未来几年将有大约6,500台~10MW的新型涡轮机（多兆瓦直接驱动和中速涡轮机）安装在英国水域，这些涡轮机在可靠性、诊断和预测方面存在“盲点”。在工业环境中，这种对海上风能成本降低和可靠性/预测启蒙的需求是该提案的激励因素。在学术背景下的动机与该应用程序特有的一些新颖的研究机会有关，这些机会在支持案例中进行了概述。这项工作的高水平目标是完成这项研究，这将允许创建工程支持解决方案，以预测海上风力涡轮机直接驱动和中速发电机的故障和剩余使用寿命。这种工程支持解决方案能够消除与陆上和海上风电场发电机相关的计划外停机时间。从一个典型的海上风电场去除计划外停机时间有可能降低海上发电成本高达4%。如果风力发电场开发商将节省的4%成本用于建造额外的海上风力发电场，将装机容量增加4%，那么这4%的成本降低将会产生影响。这将使英国每年多37万户家庭使用可持续的海上风能，每年减少66万吨的碳排放。另外，在海上风力涡轮机上使用工程支持解决方案可以节省4%的发电成本（相当于每年约2.1亿英镑，基于欧洲海上风能发电），从而降低能源成本。对于英国海上风能行业来说，这项节省成本的工作的及时性再怎么强调也不为过，因为英国海上风能行业必须在本世纪20年代中期之前降低风电场的运营和维护成本，以达到最新的执行价格。这项研究将在斯特拉斯克莱德大学进行。它将支持和支持其他EPSRC资助的项目，如EPSRC风能和海洋能源系统和结构CDT和SUPERGEN ORE Hub。许多国内和国际风力涡轮机制造商、风力发电场运营商/公用事业公司和研究机构将合作进行这项研究。

The growth of offshore wind energy is a significant feature of the UK's present and future energy mix. Wind energy is now a mainstream energy generation method in the UK and globally. In the UK alone, the offshore wind energy industry has installed approximately 8GW or roughly 2,000 offshore turbines in recent years. The impressive growth rate seen in the offshore wind energy industry has been partially driven by government policies and subsidies. For the UK offshore wind energy industry to meet the most recent strike price and eventually become subsidy free, the cost of generating electricity from offshore wind must continue to drop.Additionally, recent CCC NetZero report has called for up to 75GW of installed offshore wind energy in the coming years. If the CCC targets are to be met, there will be approximately 6,500, ~10MW, new turbines types (multi MW direct drive and medium speed turbines) installed in UK waters in the coming years based on generator technology with a "blind spot" in reliability, diagnostics and prognostics. In an industrial context, this demand for offshore wind energy cost reduction and reliability/prognostic enlightenment are the motivating factor for this proposal. The motivation in an academic context relates to a number of novel research opportunities unique to this application, which are outlined in the Case for Support.The high level aim of this work is to complete the research that will allow for the creation of engineering support solutions to predict failure and remaining useful life of direct drive and medium speed generators from offshore wind turbines. An engineering support solution of this kind has the ability to remove unplanned downtime related to generators from on and offshore wind farms. The removal of unplanned downtime from a typical offshore wind farm has the potential to reduce the cost of generating offshore electricity by up to 4%.The impact of that 4% cost reduction would be seen if wind farm developers were to invest the 4% cost saving in building additional offshore wind farms, increasing installed capacity by 4%. This would lead to an extra 370,000 homes in the UK being powered by sustainable offshore wind energy every year reducing carbon emissions by a further 660,000 tons annually. Alternatively, the 4% cost of generation savings (equivalent to ~ £210 million per year based on European offshore wind energy generation) from using the engineering support solution on offshore wind turbines could be passed to end users leading to reduced energy costs.The timeliness of this cost saving work cannot be overstated for the UK offshore wind energy industry, which must reduce wind farm operation and maintenance costs by the mid 2020s to achieve the most recent strike price. This research will be undertaken at the University of Strathclyde. It will support and be supported by other EPSRC funded initiatives such as the EPSRC Wind and Marine Energy systems and structures CDT and the SUPERGEN ORE Hub. A number of national and international wind turbine manufacturers, wind farm operators/utilities and research institutes will partner on this research.