The very essence of wind energy production is building a sustainable future. If you’re struggling to maximize uptime with the pitch system in your wind turbine, it’s only right to invest in world-class aftermarket electronics services.
Also known as electronics remanufacturing, these services keep your wind turbine components running better for longer. Keep reading to learn how remanufacturing and pitch control combine to maximize the ROI of renewable energy.
Aftermarket Electronics Services for Wind Pitch Systems: What’s Included?
If you plan to work with an advanced electronics remanufacturing company, these are the types of services you can expect:
- Pitch actuator system repair
- Retrofitting
- Troubleshooting & cause analysis
- Obsolescence management
Repair
A single faulty component can cause a snag in your supply chain. To maintain machine availability, repairs should usually not be made on-site.
Ideally, the remanufacturer is removing your blade pitch system, replacing it with a new one, and keeping the old one for later in-house repairs. New Windurance products are designed to be line-replaceable units, and don't require troubleshooting like the older equipment. New or old, the expertise is there to keep your wind turbine turning.
Troubleshooting & Cause Analysis
It’s equally important to know the “what” and the “why.”
The technicians and other users of Windurance power electronics are trained to use fault summaries that follow troubleshooting flow charts and root cause analysis best practices. Cause analysis helps identify underlying issues and can prevent costly repeat trips to your turbine for the service technician.
Obsolescence Management Services
If a component on a board you’re using becomes obsolete, your aftermarket services (AMS) provider should have a second source provider on deck or specify an alternative, or similar component.
Done correctly, this switch results in no functional change for the wind turbine. As our legacy fleet ages, Windurance will often perform this service completely in the background, saving on expensive, obsolete subcomponents and keeping the turbine from idling due to a supply chain deficiency.
5 Reasons You Need Aftermarket Services
How do aftermarket services help customers? Simply put, they make the life of the turbine owner/operator easier.
This happens in five critical ways:
1. You Don’t Need a Tech On-Site
Farmer John can fix a tractor, but he can't fix a pitch system. Nor should he have to fix one.
Working with an experienced aftermarket company allows you to leverage the technical expertise of an entire team of people. And, yes, that means you won’t need to keep a service tech at your turbine site -- this is a game-changer for those looking into distributed wind opportunities.
Some remanufacturing providers will even service products they didn’t originally build.
2. A More Affordable Way of Doing Business
Small-scale distributed wind sites are excellent candidates for electronics aftermarket services:
- Schools
- Small communities
- Farms
These institutions can’t afford to scrap an entire blade pitch system and start from scratch. Aftermarket remanufacturing services allow you to stick with your legacy equipment for many years longer.
3. Less Wind Turbine Downtime
On your end, electronics aftermarket repairs simply means dialing a phone number. Your aftermarket team will pick the blade pitch system up, insert a new box, and send the old one in for a checkup.
Resorting to a full-blown replacement or another time-consuming solution is going to cost you production time. Instead, stick with a quicker, more simple aftermarket solution that keeps your wind turbine making money.
4. Continuous Improvement
Pitch control technology should continue to improve in future years. The aftermarket team is an enormous part of that R&D.
If an aftermarket team notices there are a lot of failures happening with one particular component, the manufacturer will investigate.
Here’s a more specific example: Say you request service on an RYO (relay output) board. Your remanufacturer may discover that a component controlling hydraulic relays in the turbine is failing more frequently than others.
Furthermore, the aftermarket team may discover the potential for quality improvements to the electronics in addition to impending obsolescence issues. At that point, the RYO board becomes a full-on refabrication that will thrive for many years and improve the system's performance.
One of the goals of any aftermarket team should be to work itself out of business. Thanks to evolving pitch control technology, manufacturers can now sell you a single proverbial pen that never runs out of ink.
5. Limit e-Waste
Why invest in renewable energy if you’re not going to make the world a little greener? Scrap waste is a large part of the electronics industry, and wind turbines are large structures.
Remanufacturing a current product is a surefire way to limit e-waste in your system. Every little circuit board and component helps, especially since you can’t recycle wind turbine blades.
The Ultimate Complement to Aftermarket Services
Aftermarket services reduce your troubleshooting efforts to the following: Hit the reset button, and if that doesn’t work, call the pitch control system manufacturer.
There’s something else you can do to maximize the uptime of your wind energy system: install components that are virtually maintenance-free.
A select few wind turbine component manufacturers are developing pitch systems that are far more user-friendly than those in days past. These new solutions don't need to be poked and prodded with a voltage meter. Nor do they demand that you have specific knowledge of how the system works.
To learn more about pairing electronics remanufacturing support with advanced pitch control, leave a message via the button below:
