Joint project CertBench

  Enercon E115 wind turbine on the 4 MW system test rig at CWD Copyright: © CWD

Systematic validation of system test benches based on type testing of wind turbines

01/06/2017

Key Info

Basic Information

Duration:
01.06.2017 to 31.05.2020
Acronym:
CertBench
Group:
Drive Systems
Funding:
BMWi

Contact

Name

Maximilian Basler

Drive Systems Group Manager

Phone

work
+49 241 80 28025

Email

E-Mail
 

Motivation

Nationally and internationally, nacelle test benches for multi-megawatt wind turbines - WTs for short - have been developed in recent years and some have already been assembled and put into operation. These test benches make it possible to test complete drive trains of WTs on the ground under reproducible conditions. Test bench operators, turbine manufacturers, measurement institutes and certification bodies see the potential to use these system test benches to certify the electrical characteristics of wind turbines, thus avoiding time-consuming and costly measurements in the field. Prerequisites for this are an industry-wide, common understanding of such test benches and processes as well as common guidelines that define the requirements for the hardware and software of the test facility.

 

Project Goals and Methods

Sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Economics Affairs and Climate Action

The aim of the overall project is to demonstrate that test and measurement campaigns carried out on system test benches provide results that are just as meaningful and valid as test and measurement campaigns carried out in the field. To this end, the following two fundamental questions are to be answered satisfactorily for all parties involved:

  1. How precisely must missing components of a wind turbine be emulated on the test benches?
  2. Are the results obtained on the system test bench consistent with those measured in the field?

To focus the work of this project, this verification is exemplified by the measurement campaigns defined in the "Technical Guideline for Generation Units and Systems Part 3" - TR3 for short - for determining the electrical properties - also called type testing. These measurements are the basis for the certification of a wind turbine, so they are highly relevant with regard to further utilization.

To ensure that measurements on system test benches lead to comparable results to field tests, hardware-in-the-loop procedures are being developed in this project that enable a realistic representation of the actual dynamic behavior of a wind turbine on the test bench. In order to validate the results obtained with these procedures on the system test bench, a WT from the company ENERCON will be measured on the system test benches at IWES and CWD and the results compared with field measurements of this turbine with regard to the TR3-listed points "active power output", "reactive power supply", "grid perturbations", "disconnection from the grid", "verification of the connection conditions" and "behavior during disturbances in the grid".

 
Project partner Associated partner