The granularity of the information depends where the equipment is installed – it will tell you if there is a fault developing between two monitored points. As such the system is easily scalable.
The wind farm operator will then have time to investigate the fault. If necessary, shutdown of the relevant array section can be planned, enabling repair of the fault in the most cost-effective manner.
The key point is that the array cable won’t suddenly trip without warning, leaving you with no generation, preventing repairs at short notice.
A common question:
“So, I won’t know exactly where the fault is. How is that of use to me?”
Yes, it won’t tell you within a metre the exact location of the fault. However, knowledge of the location of a fault to within a certain section before failure still has significant value:
- Experience tells us that a large proportion of failures occur at joints and in switchgear, not within the actual cable. We’re proposing a system that would tell you if the fault was developing within the switchgear, or in a cable section – making pinpointing these faults much easier.
- If your turbine strings are arranged in a ring, switching off a single cable section doesn’t have to result in lost generation. With the faulty cable switched out, you can then pinpoint the fault within the cable section, without loss of generation. We may be able to provide additional equipment to support you with this.
- In the worst-case scenario, you’ve got advanced warning ahead of a failure. You can plan for the moment when the section does fail and will be in a much better position to make the repair. As we gain experience in this sector, we may also be able to more accurately predict when a cable will fail.
Future projects?
This is a new application utilising proven Bender technology. We are looking to collaborate with interested industry partners to implement our technology into existing wind farms or to be designed into switchgear for future applications.
Contact
This blog was written by Will Heard (MEng, Electrical Engineer Bender UK). If you have any feedback or ideas for using this proposed solution, we would love to hear them.
About Bender UK
We are part of the Bender Group, and a growing UK electrical safety company with 70+ employees in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
We specialise in providing solutions for monitoring power systems, combining world leading devices manufactured at our factory in Germany with technical know-how to find something that works for you. We’re involved in lots of industries, and our technology is applicable in just about any application where availability of electrical power is crucial.
