• Energy Research
• 2015 close

Building methodology in skyscrapers marked a turning point in the construction sector. Due to the high altitude of those buildings, the only way of building them is a crane that rises in the same manner the skyscraper does. The main objective of the AIRCRANE project is to complete, qualify, standard setting and demonstrate in real working conditions a self-climbing telescopic crane (AIRCRANE) for the construction of full-concrete towers for wind turbines, at very low cost compared to current market solutions. This new solution has been inspired by the skyscraper’s building methodology. As a consequence of the development of this new crane, the second objective will be the introduction in the market of a new full-concrete tower with no height limit and with a new patented procedure of building that will bring reliability, time saving, quality and workers safety. In the current decade the main trend in the wind energy sector is to decrease the costs of the energy produced by wind turbines. One of the main strategies is the installation of the rotor axis (as well as nacelle and generator) at higher heights, as much as possible, where turbulences are minor and the efficiency of the equipment is higher. However, the wind industry has found some technical and economic constraints given by the construction of steel towers. This constraints are related to: size limitations in transport (larger diameters of tower segments), cost increase for heights greater than 100m., vibrations, etc.. Full concrete towers, built with precast concrete elements are a feasible solution: easy to transport, more durable (~50 years vs. ~25 years of steel), less vibrant, less required maintenance, etc. Another advantage is that concrete annual average price is significantly lower than steel. The development of the new AIRCRANE will help in the construction of full concrete towers, to reach heights unreachable with conventional nowadays crawler cranes (>140m) and at a much lower cost.

The project focuses on the Concentrated Solar Power sector (CSP). A HTF (High Temperature Fluid) is a liquid used to heat transport and transfer it in a solar thermal plant. Nowadays, most of the plants (both parabolic or tower technology) use synthetic oil as the HTF, which reaches working temperatures up to 400ºC. However, high temperature cycles accelerate oil degradation and then impurities appear. The appearance of impurities is a problem that affects the operation and the integrity of the current CSP power plants. Oil regeneration is a common operation in many industrial processes, however, there is no specific solution for CSP power plants that meet their efficiency and costs related needs without risking their profitability. By now, CSP power plant operators treat the oil periodically in external far regeneration plants that provide a standard fluid distillation with low efficiency and big fluid loses that represent great costs. Due to sector’s current constraints to increase power plant’s capital investment and operation & maintenance costs new more efficient, and with more flexible management models, HTF regeneration solutions are required. TRANSREGEN is a new high efficiency oil regeneration system that implements a compact & transportable design in order to extend fluid generation and waste management possibilities. Having successfully designed & validated TRANSREGEN technology in a relevant environment, the overall objective of this project is the demonstration of the final solution in solar thermal plants in real operating conditions.

At least 3% of wind production downtime due to breakdowns and maintenance problems that can reach up to 40%. This leads to production losses of over €2.9 billion worldwide annually. Our current SmartCast remotely connects SCADA and sensor data with a virtual database to monitor wind turbines. It involves algorithms based AI, cloud computing and data mining. The SmartGear product is a low cost Condition Monitoring System based on IoT technology which acquires raw data and connects with SmartCast Platform for further processing. The overall objective of the future Phase II Cloud Diagnosis project is to scale-up our SmartGear technology by introducing communication protocols that allow us to extract data from multiple devices allocated in the wind turbines and additional transducers. Additionally, SmartCast cloud diagnosis algorithms need to be improved. Our innovative solution will allow faster detection of wind turbine system failures through complex algorithms implementing intelligent sensor fusion, therefore, optimizing the performance of wind turbines. It does not require onsite visits but provides information online. In this way, our technology will be able to: Reduce wind turbine maintenance cost by 20%: €44 million annually in the Spanish market, €190 million per year in Europe and €440 million annually in the world market. Reduce wind turbine operation cost and component replacement of cost by 20%: A standard park of 50 MW (16 turbines) installation power working 2,100 hours per year faces production losses of at least €378,000 annually. Our system enables 20% savings of €75,600 (€4,725 per turbine). Currently, our SmartCast platform processes real-time data from SCADA and sensors by means of SVM (support vector machine) in 300 turbines. Our SmartGear Solution is present in two wind farms and is being rolled out in five more.