Monthly Archives: March 2019

Long term instrumented monitoring of wind turbine foundations cracks evolution

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Fiber Bragg grating sensors (Image copyright fbgs.com)

Some weeks ago I have discovered that, as I am currently enrolled as a university student (getting “slowly but steady” a second degree in Economics) I have full access to the Elsevier database.

This is an enormous amount of information, including all the best scientific papers and technical articles published by industry journals.

I am using this possibility to learn more and stay updated on several niche topics that I found interesting – from recycling of wind turbine to bird strikes to foundations pathologies.

Browsing the database, I recently stumbled upon an interesting article published by Jack McAlorum et al. from the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow).

The paper is called “Deterioration of cracks in onshore wind turbine foundation”.

The authors instrumented an octagonal slab foundation (sometimes called “star foundation” or “wall foundation”) to monitor the evolution of existing cracks.

I already wrote a couple of posts on foundation cracks: they can be due to a variety of root causes, such as:

  • Design mistakes
  • Errors in the composition of concrete mix
  • Extreme temperatures
  • Errors in the execution of the wind turbine (for instance, concrete poured in different batches creating construction joints)
  • Failures due to the use of an embedded can (this is a frequent failure reason for older wind turbines)

The paper does not specify the reason for the cracks. However, as typical, the most severe cracks were in the side of the wind turbine facing the wind (as the concrete is in tension there).

What it is interesting is the fact that the behaviour of the foundation has been monitored for a very long period (over 9 months) and under standard operating conditions. This is very unusual: while other key component of the turbine like the gearbox are constantly monitored and the data is collected trying to detect problems and predict failures, I have never heard of such monitoring for the foundation.

Additionally it is interesting the type of sensor used: instead of standard accelerometers or strain gauges the researchers used a strain sensor based on fibre-optic called “fibre Bragg gratings” (FBGs).

Basically it is a sort section of optical fiber treated in a way that some specific wavelengths are reflected and some are transmitted. They can be used as a strain sensor because when they are deformed the transmitted and reflected wavelengths shift, allowing a calculation of deformation.

Cracks can evolve with 3 different displacement type:

  1. Opening (the crack becomes wider)
  2. Sliding (one face of the crack slides on top of the other)
  3. Tearing

Through the monitoring period no significant evolution of cracks was observed. Basically, the wind turbine owner was lucky: cracks did not deteriorate and no intervention was needed.

Unfortunately, the cost associated with the monitoring are not shared, so it is difficult to make a business case (cost of immediately repairing the cracks with grouts or epoxy resins vs. cost of monitoring to see if the intervention is needed).

I also see that this solution only allow monitoring visible cracks. This is a strong limitation, as several failures originate in a non-visible area of the foundation.

Said that the idea is certainly interesting and useful, above all considering that some turbine are kept in operation for a very long time, even exceeding the design life of the foundation (usually 20 years).

 

Over and over and over again: serial defect clause

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The serial defect clause is a warranty frequently requested by customers.

It belongs to a classic “tryptic” of warranties allocating risk on the turbine suppliers:

  • General warranty, for defect in design, manufacturing, installation, etc.
  • Power curve warranty
  • Serial defect warranty

Generally speaking, a serial defect is a component defective on a significant number of turbines. If there is a certain percentage of defective components, the warranty force the turbine seller to replace it on all the turbines.

As you will imagine, the tricky part is the specific definition of the clause.

Among the key point to be defined these are specially important:

  1. The definition of defect / defective.
  2. The time-frame for the defect to appear. How many years?
  3. The reason for the defect. Is the root cause the same? You can have for instance many blade failures caused by different problems.
  4. The percentage of failures needed to declare a serial defect. Is it 10%, 20%, more?
  5. The population of turbines used to calculate the percentage of failure. Only the wind turbine in the wind farm, all the turbines of the same model owned by the customer, all existing turbines of the same model?
  6. Who should confirm the existence of the defect. A reasonable compromise for this point can be an independent third party.

The reason behind this clause is that such serial defects happened in the past - not only in the infancy of the wind industry, but also in more recent years when components have been replaced on massive numbers of turbines, even of Tier 1 manufacturers.

Without this clause the buyer can be left in a very uncomfortable situation where maybe he is aware of the (latent) problem but only if the components that fail during the Warranty or Service period are replaced.

Transfer of title & transfer of risk

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Transfer of title and transfer of risk are 2 key concepts in wind farms contracts (and, presumably, in many other comparable businesses). They appear in both EPC and Supply Only agreements.

This is what they usually means:

Transfer of title (ToT): the ownership (of the entire turbine or of one of the component of the wind farm, such as the foundation) is transferred to the buyer.

Transfer of risk (ToR): risk of damages and losses is transferred to the buyer.

Although it may look counterintuitive they do not have to happen at the same point in time: for instance, an EPC contract could have transfer of title when a certain percentage of the wind turbine is paid -for instance, 80%- and transfer of risk only after commissioning (that is, the turbine is installed, tested and ready for production).

When the relevant percentage is paid is defined in the projects cash flow. In general, it could happen that the transfer of title happen many months before wind turbine installation.

The percentage of the wind turbine price to be paid to have transfer of title is usually one of the key negotiation topics. For the sake of clarity, the wind turbine seller would retain some case of security (e.g. a bank bond) until the equipment is paid in full in case the buyer stop the payments after the transfer of title.

It is worth to notice that one party (or both) might be interested in an early ToT or ToR, for instance if they are linked to revenue recognition. For instance, in some Supply Only or Supply and Install contracts revenue recognition is at ToR, so the turbine seller want to have it as soon as possible.

For a variety of reasons, it could be the buyer interested in an early ToT or ToR, possibly even before the completion of the wind farm balance of plant (basically, when the wind farm is not ready for installation). In a similar scenario the turbines would be delivered to a temporary storage area where the ToT and ToR would happen.

One more interesting point is that, in some jurisdictions, a sales tax could become applicable when the ownership of the turbines is transferred. This could be a good reason for an early or late transfer of title in a different jurisdiction.