Lubricating a wind turbine can be a huge challenge, for a variety of reasons.
As if that’s not enough, wind farms can be located in remote areas. Getting a maintenance engineer out to a wind farm located 60 kilometers offshore is timeconsuming and expensive. And it’s only possible when weather conditions are favorable. Onshore wind turbines can also be located in remote locations that are difficult to access, and of course can be more than 100 meters above ground.
Graco lubrication equipment for wind turbines is designed for remote and hard to reach lube points, where they deliver predetermined lubricant directly to the lubrication point.
In the harsh environment of an offshore wind farm, Graco’s GL-1 High Corrosion Protection (HCP) injectors are invaluable. They provide C5-M (1,440 hours of salt spray environment) corrosion protection as defined by EN ISO 12944 Part 2. Moreover, they offer the same long life as Graco’s proven GL-1 injectors.
Cost benefits are possible too, because the GL-1 HPC injectors are less expensive than all-stainless-steel alternatives of similar pressure and output ranges. Finally, they are available as ready-to-install injector assemblies: from one injector to six injectors on a single manifold.
Graco’s distributor in Latvia, Baltic Wind Solutions, is responsible to maintain and service 26 Neg Micon NM80 wind turbines in a wind farm alongside the Baltic Sea in Ventspils. To ensure efficient lubrication and increase the running time of the turbines, they installed a centralized automatic lubrication system.
The Graco solution consists of a G1 pump with an 8-liter grease reservoir, a 24 VDC power supply and an external low level indicator. The pump only runs when the wind turbine is working. This guarantees that there is no under- or over-lubrication of the wind turbine. The pump and centralized lubrication system are connected to a SCADA monitoring system which allows the operator to manage all the wind turbines in the wind farm.