Oil changes

The main gearbox drives the generator marking it a critical piece of equipment. Advanced designs and overall importance to system performance makes gearboxes costly to repair or replace after the warranty expires. For example, replacing a gearbox in a 2.5MW turbine can cost a company more than £400,000 when you add in the price of a new gearbox, labour, crane rental, and lost revenue from turbine downtime.

To minimize the chance of a premature gearbox failure, OEMs recommend routine, scheduled maintenance, oil-circulation equipment, and an oil analysis.

Although the maintenance staff traditionally changes the oil, there are many physical and logistical challenges, including the climb up-tower, remote turbine locations, weather extremes, limited available utilities, numerous trips lugging down used oil, lifting 20 litres of new lubricant up an 80-mtr tower, and finally pouring it into a gearbox. Following established OEM procedures, the oil change for a wind turbine gearbox generally takes about eight hours and requires three maintenance technicians.

Windtex, in conjunction with The Chemical Corporation, can supply vastly reduced oil change times by using their purpose designed truck mounted oil exchange unit, all oil is pre-heated and pre-filtered to DIN ISO 4406:99 cleanliness standards via a closed-circuit procedure to ensure the cleanest oil is delivered.