The unique fire risks facing wind farm assets
High-risk zones: The nacelle and control systems
In order to function, every wind turbine requires a nacelle. This is essentially the brain of the wind turbine and it contains a lot of materials that can increase fire risk. The nacelle contains components such as the gearbox and hydraulic systems which require lubricating oil and hydraulic fluid to function effectively. These substances are also highly flammable. Mechanical failures can result in these liquids leaking onto hot surfaces and igniting which can lead to the quick acceleration of a fire.
Ignition sources: Electrical faults, lightning, and mechanical failure
The nacelle and control systems also contain a lot of electrical components and electrical cabling. This can cause fire risks due to electrical faults such as arcing, overheating, overloading, and short circuits. Each of these electrical issues has high potential to become the ignition point of a fire.
The cost of failure: Total asset loss and revenue impact
In the event of a fire, 90% of wind turbines are completely destroyed. This can result in massive financial losses upwards of 2 million pounds per turbine. It is not only the damage to a turbine and replacement costs that cause losses due to a wind farm fire though. There is also a loss in revenue stream due to a significant amount of electricity no longer being produced. With a new replacement turbine potentially taking months to arrive and be properly set up, a single fire event can easily result in major revenue loss.
The inadequacy of traditional wind turbine fire protection
Traditional wind turbine fire protection is only good at reporting active fire risks and alerting emergency services that there is a need for a fire to be contained. When it comes to preventing a fire from happening in the first place, it is completely inadequate.
Manual, reactive, and low-resilience systems
Manual fire safety systems for wind farms are very inefficient due to the remote and difficult to access nature of wind turbine systems. This means that manual checks and scheduled maintenance can be time-consuming and expensive. Add to this the potential costs of using reactive nacelle fire detection systems, and there are many ways in which relying on these systems can be very costly.
By using reactive fire safety systems, you risk losing entire wind turbines due to fire events. This is because wind turbine fires are very difficult for emergency services to stop and wind turbine fire suppression usually focuses on preventing the fire from spreading further while letting it burn out. This means that the prevention of fires should take precedent over simply detecting them.
The challenge of remote maintenance and data silos
Managing a large number of fire safety assets across a multiple sites on a wind farm is made very difficult if each site has its own alarm data that needs to be checked manually.This can result in the maintenance schedules of fire safety systems becoming sluggish and inefficient as remote sites require more time and potentially personnel to keep up with the overall reporting and solving of fire safety issues.
Why detection alone isn't enough to save your asset
Detection alone isn’t enough to save a wind turbine because any fire event is likely to spread very quickly, and the emergency services cannot do much to stop a wind turbine fire due to how high up the nacelle is. Standard firefighting equipment would simply not be able to reach. In most cases, a wind turbine fire results in the turbine being completely destroyed and requiring replacement.
Fire Alarms
Panic Alarms
Intruder Alarms
Sprinkler Systems
Plant Alarms
Gas Alarms
