Humber’s research team supports industry partner to enhance their customer service delivery
Background
Complete Wind Corporation works with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and owner/operators to meet their specific wind turbine rotor blade needs. With a core management team having greater than 15 years’ experience in the Wind Turbine Industry, they have the experience required to meet specific needs and services like rotor blade inspection & repair, End of Warranty (EOW) rotor blade inspections and turbine performance trouble shooting.
Chris Wraith, Engineer at Complete Window Corporation, wrote a paper on the value of rotor blade EOW inspections and noted that with the purchase of a wind turbine, the owner/operator typically receives a warranty valid for a 2-to-5-year period. Nearing the end of this initial warranty period, it is critical that the owner/operator performs an EOW inspection on their rotor blades before deciding on how the turbines are to be serviced and maintained for the remainder of their design life.
This inspection is essential even if the owner/operator plans to continue with the OEM service team.
Complete Wind Corporation has long-term contracts with customers. They receive customers’ turbine data and analyze the data. Third party companies, like Complete Wind Corp., that perform these inspections will assess their findings, compile results into reports and provide recommendations to the owner/operator on what actions are required. Close evaluation of the OEM’s responses is required to ensure that the rationale for acceptance of the defects/anomalies discovered during the inspections is sufficient to mitigate their future risk to the blade.
Through the report findings, the owner/operator gains information on the overall quality of their blades, and the wear and replacement characteristics of the blade and blade components such as LE protection and aerodynamic elements. Additionally, and quite commonly the largest benefit to the owner/operator, if manufacturing defects which were not discovered by the quality department of the OEM during initial manufacture are found, the EOW inspections will ensure that their repair cost does not come upon the owner/operator themselves.
Data Discovery to Visualization
The Humber research team, led by a professor at Humber’s Faculty of Applied Sciences & Technology (FAST), addressed “data visualization” and provided suggestions to Complete Wind Corporation. This was done with an aim to enable Complete Wind Corporation to derive deeper insights into the turbine data to, in turn, provide valuable recommendations to their customers for service or maintenance.
The Humber research team, which included research assistant Apaarjas Narang, a 2021 Humber graduate from FAST, tapped into the data visualization features and dashboard performance tools provided by Tableau. The team approached Barath Roy Michel, Senior Project Manager at Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation, who supported the team and provided valuable Tableau training.
“The process of combining multiple sheets and building a dashboard is always beneficial to the end-user, especially when dealing with inspections and tracking maintenance countdowns. The opportunity this presents to the students in terms of learning and building meaningful prototypes for industry partners is key to meeting Humber’s strategic pillar of developing Career-Ready Citizens.” – Barath Roy Michel, Senior Project Manager, Office of Research & Innovation, Humber College.
The team collected raw data which was then populated into a spreadsheet. The team carefully combined the data with equations/macros/calculations and produced an enhanced dataset. Then, using a variety of data visualization techniques, the team was able to elaborate and depict the blade defects per turbine in an innovative way.
Utilizing Tableau and data visualization features provided a significant improvement from looking over rows and rows of data on a large spreadsheet. Furthermore, easy representation through charts and graphs made it extremely viable to either share this information with the customer or maintain data for further inspections without the hassle of using excel sheets.
“We strive to provide every customer with the same level of detail in our inspection reports. We also realize that as much as a high level of detail is appreciated, there will always be customers or departments within an organization that desire a more focused view of the results. Seeing this variety of visual representations of our sample data displays the potential to provide each customer with the ability to review their data, or subsets within their data, in a manner of their choosing.” – Jeremie Lachance, Data Analytics Supervisor, Complete Wind Corporation.
Research Team Objectives
Enabling Complete Wind Corp. to
- harness the data;
- provide exceptional insights to their customers;
- make educated projections of turbine health;
- recommend maintenance that may be necessary in the coming year.
Are you interested in harnessing the benefits of Tableau? Register for the upcoming Innovation Workshop Buffet: Introduction to Data analytics and Storytelling (Tableau) that runs from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Check out our Upcoming Events to register.
Reference
Wraith, C. (n.d.). The value of end of warranty inspections-1 - complete wind. CompleteWind.com. Retrieved from http://www.completewind.com/content/Downloads/The_Value_of_End_of_Warranty_Inspections-11.pdf