Osnabruck, Germany, 27 August 2014. The manufacturer-independent service provider seebaWIND Service has successfully repaired a badly damaged 1.5 megawatt wind power plant in the district of Schleswig-Flensburg and put it back in operation. For this challenging project, seebaWIND Service served as project manager, working with several manufacturers, appraisers and other service providers.
In addition to the technical work of dismantling and rebuilding the plant, seebaWIND Service also coordinated the various maintenance groups and appraisers. Accident assessors, along with the state criminal investigation department, identified the cause of the fire. seebaWIND helped here as well: “An electrical short-circuit between the power cables caused the fire in the machine housing”, explains the accident assessor for causes of fires, Harald Eden and adds, “The seebaWIND team assisted up in a friendly and competent way while we were searching for the cause of the fire.”
From Searching for the Cause to Rehabilitating
“For plants with serious fire damage, one always anticipates unexpected problems”, explains Thomas Jensen from the operating company Dollerup Bürgerwindpark GmbH & Co. KG. This presented a challenge for the seebaWIND Team, for example, as they had to adapt the control system of the new plant components to the inverter of the old plant and the overall assembly to the current technical standards. Additionally, specific rotor blades had to be fabricated anew, since the MD70 series has not been built for about seven years and used rotor blades were not available.
“Since seebaWIND Service manages MD70-series plants in large numbers and has coordinated its work with our long-term service provider EEG Service & Technik GmbH very well, we felt we were in good hands from the very beginning”, says Thomas Jensen. From the first day, seebaWIND Service placed a supervisor at the side of the operator and made sure that all the replacement parts and necessary cranes were on location at the right time.
Cooperating with SINOI
The seebaWIND technicians restored the upper section of the 65-meter tower after the damaged rotor blades and damaged machine housing had been dismantled and unusable parts disposed of properly. Then they prepared the rest of the plant to mount the components that needed to be replaced. The new rotor blades – having a length of 34 meters and a weight of 4.5 tonnes – were manufactured by the company SINOI out of Nordhausen, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of rotor blades. “Thanks to the cooperation with SINOI, we were able to place the plant back in operation after a manageable period of time”, says seebaWIND managing director Holger Hämel. “We are pleased that we were taken along on board by seebaWIND Service and the operating company”, adds SINOI managing director Carsten Zaremba. “We worked together with a very clear target in mind.”