Reliawind - Consortium

Presentation of Consortium composition

Ten top partners are taking part in this ambitious project, each of them leaders in technical and operational disciplines in the wind power generation value chain.

This includes representatives from different sectors, namely: the Wind Industry itself, Gamesa (project coordinator), Alstom Power Systems - Wind (previous Ecotecnia), LM Wind Power (previous LM Glasfiber), Hansen, ABB and SKF; Technology experts are GL Garrad Hassan (previous Garrad Hassan and Parnters) and Relex Reliability Software and Services; and Academia is represented by Durham University, UK and SZTAKI, a Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest.

Gamesa - [Gamesa] - Spain

Gamesa is a company specialized in sustainable energy technologies and one of the main wind turbine manufacturers worldwide. The company, which has over 13,000 MW installed throughout the world and 32 production centers in Europe, the USA and China, carries out the design, manufacturing, sales, installation, as well as operation and maintenance of its wind turbines. Its product portfolio comprises medium power turbines (Gamesa G5X-850 kW) and MultiMW turbines (Gamesa G8X-2.0 MW and the new platform under development: Gamesa G10X), whose main characteristics are an optimum adaptability to all types of sites and winds.

The Research and Development Department of Gamesa's wind turbine manufacturing division works to develop new models, identify and oversee technological innovation projects in production processes and products, and provides technical support for the company’s activities. The development and application of the most modern technologies is based on considerable investment in R&D. This has made Gamesa one of the top eight Spanish companies, and among the top 300 in Europe, in terms of investment in research and development.

The application of the best, most modern technologies, together with great industrial potential, makes it possible for Gamesa to design and manufacture increasingly more advanced wind turbines. The aim of Gamesa’s activity is to guarantee the complete satisfaction of its clients and to consolidate the use of wind power as a source of clean energy, in a clear commitment to the environment to create a better future: a future of sustainable development.

Alstom Power Systems - Wind - [Alstom] - Spain

Alstom Power Systems - Wind (previous Ecotecnia) is a Wind Turbine manufacturer, working in turbine design and production and Wind Farm engineering, construction, operation and maintenance, but is also present in the solar power production market. Though its headquarters are in Barcelona, it has 700 employees altogether and four industrial plants throughout Spain. It has been a Member of EWEA organization from its beginning, and has at present almost a 2% share of the global marke

It has been present in the Wind Power market since 1984, with more than 100 engineers experienced in all technologies involved in Wind energy. It will contribute to the project defining process and data requirements for reliability improvement and evaluation due its knowledge of design operation and maintenance and, even more with its experience of processes to interrelate these tree disciplines (transfer of know-how and feed-back).

For this project, Alstom Power Systems - Wind, as a Wind Turbine Generator manufacturer is in a great position to test, validate and directly put into market the results of this project.

LM Wind Power - [LM] - Denmark

LM Wind Power (previous LM Glasfiber) is the world’s leading supplier of blades for wind turbines, and the only supplier that operates on a global basis. Blades play a crucial role in wind turbines and their design is crucial to the efficient exploitation of energy from the wind. LM blades are currently mounted on more than one in three wind turbines throughout the world. Our production capacity measured in MW is the largest in the industry, and we have factories in four major regions including Northern Europe, Southern Europe, North America and Asia.

Regarding the RELIAWIND project and needs for expertise, LM Wind Power is accredited to test wind turbine blades by DANAK – the Danish Accreditation and Metrology Fund. This accreditation from the official Danish body in this field is the seal of approval for impartiality, reliability and technical competence in the methods used in our testing and calibration laboratories. We carry out both static and dynamic tests on all new blades, and the results are then incorporated into our integrated test programme. In addition, LM Wind Power, use different kinds of electronic NDT to complement visual and manual quality assurance (QA).

Hansen Transmissions International N.V. - [Hansen Transmission] - Belgium

Hansen Transmissions is a Belgium based company and has 1400 employees worldwide. Hansen Transmissions designs, manufactures, sells and services innovative and durable drives for a wide range of industrial applications throughout the world, especially in sectors where low noise levels, minimum weight and high reliability are essential (including water treatment, wind-turbines, material handling, etc.). The company is continually investing in the latest technology and machinery.

Hansen is specialised in gear technology and design, gearbox design and validation testing, fatigue analysis, dynamical modelling and noise as well as vibration

Within the design and validation environment, the company already has experience with some risk analysis tools such as FMEA. The company sees this project as a learning opportunity for both the company and the entire supply chain with the aim to realize a step increase regarding reliability engineering in the wind turbine application.

ABB Oy - [ABB] - Finland

ABB, located in Helsinki, Finland, specialises in development and manufacturing of low voltage drives and motors/generators and is recognized as market leader in frequency converter drives and in high power AC machines.
As manufacturer of wind turbine converter and electrical generators Drives contributes to the project with know-how of power electrical components to model reliability of electrical drive-train and to improve diagnostic.

SKF Ltd. - [SKF] - United Kingdom

SKF celebrates its 100 year aniversary in 2007. The company was founded by a textile Engineer who was facing a reliability issue due to changing geological conditions beneath his factory. This led to the innovation of the self aligning ball bearing and the formation of the SKF company. Now in a new millennia SKF faces a new reliabilty challenge for a critically important form of renewable energy - wind energy. SKF is committed to making its contribution to improving this situation to benefit this industry and thereby reducing dependance on fossil fuels and hence CO2 generation.

SKF is work leader in rolling element bearing manufacture and design. with manufacturing experience also extending to seals, housings and bespoke sub systems. Knowledge of application extends from design criteria to maintenance management, including condition monitoring.

Wind Energy is a key market for SKF, which has a wide range of experience in bearing application and operation. This experience extends across a multitude of industries including Wind Energy.

GL Garrad Hassan - [GH] - United Kingdom

GL Garrad Hassan is the leading independent engineering consultancy (nearly 300 engineers in 18 countries) providing expert advice to the wind industry for more than 20 years. The company has played a key role in proposing and successfully completing EU research projects and has considerable expertise and experience relevant to this Project including:

• Analysis and assessment of more than 80,000 MW of wind farms around the world, acting as Banks’ or Owners Engineer for 21,000 MW (worth some £21 billion) of wind capacity;
• Experience of the derivation of reliability profiles of wind turbines represented in terms of mean time between failure (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) statistics;
• Experience of fault tree analysis and failure mode effects analysis (FMEA) for wind turbine systems;
• Experience of comprehensive load calculations, control system development, design of mechanical, structural and electrical components, support of certification and testing of both onshore and offshore wind turbines;
• Development of software models.

PTC - Relex - [Relex] - Italy

RSCE's main task is the sale and technical support of analysis software package "Relex Reliability Studio 2007" which is the world’s leading software tool as it contains modules for almost all reliability analysis methods. . In addition RSCE performs consultancy work for various European companies mainly from the telecom, industrial electronics, defence and aerospace business. RSCE is specialized to perform reliability, safety analyses as well as risk assessments for all kinds of systems and equipment.

• Relex is going to bring its strong knowledge and experience in reliability to the other partners of the consortium, based on its past experience and European recognition:
• Reliability analyses are based on certain standards which have been developed for aerospace, electronics, public traffic and nuclear industry. Use of these methods can also improve reliability on Wind energy systems
• Relex, as a supplier of the main analysis tool, has gathered lot of experience and can transfer the knowledge gained from this by providing training to the individual partner companies. In addition Relex will act as an independent supervisor and perform the top-level analyses.

Durham University - [UDUR] - United Kingdom

England's 3rd oldest University is located in the North East close to Newcastle. Last year it was the UK University with the highest international citation level for its research work. The School of Engineering was the first established in the UK in 1838 and is recognised as one of the UK's 5 foremost Engineering Schools. The School has an integrated engineering research portfolio in which New & Renewable Energy is a flagship topic

The New & Renewable Energy research group's particular skill set is in the development of large-scale offshore wind and in particular the optimisation of reliability and availability of these systems. The skills of relevance to the project are the ability to predict turbine reliability and availability and the preparation of Failure Modes and Effects Analayses for renewable projects.

Durham University has particular skills in the investigation of the reliability of wind turbines and their condition monitoring. They are members of the European Wind Academy and are connected to other researchers in the European Wind Industry.

Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences - [MTA SZTAKI] - Hungary

The Computer and Automation Institute (SZTAKI) was founded in the early sixties as a research and development institution of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The Institute gained world-wide reputation in computer graphics, computer-aided design and manufacturing, process control, robotics, operations research, numerical methods, advanced information systems and networking. One of the main missions of the Institute is to realise technology transfer to the Hungarian industry and service sectors including SMEs.

Regarding the RELIAWIND project and its needs for expertise contributions will be provided by the Laboratory on Engineering and Management Intelligence (EMI) of SZTAKI as it is involved in research and elaboration of techniques applicable to handling complex production and business systems working in the uncertain, changing environments, with special emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches, mainly in the fields of intelligent monitoring, supervision and control; modelling, control and optimization of technical and business processes; handling changes and disturbances in complex systems; modelling and simulation of large production and business systems.