Wellbeing for wind turbines

Wind Energy Technology Department has developed a device, the Accurate Time Linked data Acquisition System (ATLAS II), which determines the efficiency and health of wind turbines.

Housed in an environmentally protected aluminium box, ATLAS II is said to be capable of sampling a large number of signals at once to characterise the inflow, the operational state, and the structural response of a wind turbine.

The ATLAS II has several key attributes that make it particularly attractive for wind turbine deployment. It is small, highly reliable, can operate continuously, uses off-the-shelf components, and has lightning protection on all channels.

“The system provides us with sufficient data to help us understand how our turbine blade designs perform in real-world conditions, allowing us to improve on the original design and our design codes,” said Jose Zayas, the project lead, who has been working on ATLAS II since its inception in 1999.

Last year the ATLAS II team completed a project with GE Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to monitor the performance of a GE wind turbine in a Great Plains site about 30 miles south of Lamar, Colorado, and will soon start monitoring a new work-for-others (WFO) project with Texas Tech University.