How to Maintain Wind Turbine?

The wind turbine, borrowed from jet engine technology, overcomes a fundamental drawback of conventional wind turbines. A wind turbine's blades are surrounded by a shield that directs air through them and speeds them up, increasing the amount of electricity produced. A wind turbine is a turbine powered by wind energy. To make a wind turbine last, we need to learn how to maintain it. In this article, we describe the maintenance of wind turbines in chronological order.

For the first month after you first erect the turbine:

• Shut it down while you are away, unless you are positive that winds will be gentle. After a month, you can leave it running while you are away (as long as you installed an automatic controller and dump load).
• Watch it regularly, including monitoring power output.
• Listen for strange sounds, sniff for strange smells, and watch for odd behavior.
• Check the pendant cable from the wind turbine to the ground weekly to see how much it has twisted, unplug it at the tower base, untwist the wires, and plug it back in. This will give you some indication of how frequently you'll need to check this in the future.
• One month after you install the turbine, lower the tower and inspect everything, including the guy wire anchors, turnbuckles and cable clamps. Check all bolts on the turbine itself, and re-tighten if needed.

Six months after you erect the turbine:

• Lower the tower (or climb a non-tilting tower), and firmly re-tighten all the bolts and nuts that hold together the blades and alternator.
• If you used linseed oil to finish the blades and tail, re-apply it in another thick coat or two.
• Check all guy wire anchors, turnbuckles and cable clamps.

Yearly:

• Lower the tower, (or climb a non-tilting tower), and check all the bolts and nuts that hold together the blades and alternator.
• Apply more linseed oil finish to the blades, wooden hubs, and tail vane.
• Check all guy wire anchors, turnbuckles and cable clamps.
• Refresh the grease on the yaw bearing and tail pivot bearing. Grease the main bearing if needed. To do this, remove the cotter pin on the main bearing, remove the main bearing nut, and apply axle grease liberally to the bearings. Put the nut back and get it resonably tight, then back it off until you can insert the cotter pin. Once the cotter pin is in, back the nut off as much as the cotter pin allows. You do not want this nut tight, that would make the alternator too hard to turn.