Safe servo drive Moog for wind turbines

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Moog has earned a safety certification from TÜV Rheinland for the Moog Pitch Servo Drive 3, improving safety in the operation of wind turbines. The feathering safety function supplied by the Moog Pitch System 3 Servo Drive alters a wind turbine’s blade pitch at the rotor hub to minimize the torque applied by the wind, avoiding excessive speed of the turbine. As a result, the pitch servo drive is classified as a safety component.

The safety built into the system helps wind farm operators in three important ways: first of all, the technology avoids hazards from the wind turbine and therefore lowers the insurance fees for wind farm operators. In addition, the safety related development of Moog Pitch System 3 required an IEC 61508 and 13849 compliant V-model process including intensive failure insertion testing, which boosts reliability of the overall product, which of course lowers downtime and reduces the levelized cost of energy.

Moog also improved the architecture of Pitch System 3 to meet IEC 61508 and ISO 13849, standards governing wind turbine safety. Moog’s engineers provide indeed a safety function referred to as Safe Feathering Run (SFR), which automatically moves and stops a turbine’s blades in the feathering position. Furthermore, Moog included a Safe Stop function called Stop1 meeting the ISO 13849 standard to arrest the motion of an individual blade during manual movement of the blades.

Finally, in order to protect a wind turbine against overvoltage from the grid and lightning strikes, Moog included a new component called the Moog Pitch Interface Module, a firewall to protect the blades against extreme environmental conditions and so called common cause failures (CCFs). Moog also asked lightning protection specialist DEHN to test Pitch System 3 (including its servo drive and interface module) inside a high voltage lab subjecting the system to multiple lightning strikes reaching more than 260,000 amps. Afterward, the system was still fully operational and performed a Safe Feathering Run.

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