Underperformance analysis of wind turbines -Icing -

¹ State Engineer on Renewable Energies and O&M expert, PhD student at LPMCER department FSTM, Morocco
² Research Professor at Univ. Hassan 2 – FSTM Director of “Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée et energies renouvelables”, Morocco
³ Doctor of Physics “Annimator of Quality and Energy Management” Researcher in Photovoltaics and Energy Efficiency, Morocco

^* Rachid Mkhaitari: rachidmkhaitari@email.com

Abstract

Wind energy systems are the most promising resources on green energy, it needs to follow the increase demand of electrical energy not only by the future technologies but also with improving the performances. In this work, we present a first performance study of the “Icing System” that monitors and controls the ice detection on blades, it stops the machines when the corresponded sensor detects the presence of ice on the blades, the problem is that the status “Ice Detection Stop” is activated out of consideration of the nacelle’s position and its direction, this stop cost a lot in terms of production and incomes. The turbine restart automatically when the ice is heated and after several hours of production losses. The main idea of this article is to set up a configuration on monitoring system that refers to available database and the daily registered data from the solar met mast to fix the nacelle direction taking into consideration the sunrise and sunset. Using the sun energy, the applied process will help to speed up the heating of ice on blades and minimise the impact of the stops. As result, the availability will improve as well as the annual production of energy.