The wind from the East
Mingyang Smart Energy works with HARTING to create innovative fan solutions
Shuai Wang, Key Account Manager Goldwind, HARTING China
With the rapid growth of China's wind energy industry, HARTING China has continuously explored the cooperations with leading wind turbine manufacturers in recent years, creating innovative connectivity solutions for wind turbine equipment according to customer needs, which are favoured by key customers in the industry, and Mingyang Smart Energy is one of them.
As a kind of clean and renewable energy, wind energy has been one of the hot areas in China's energy construction for more than 10 years. With the proposal of China's goal of “emission peak and carbon neutralisation” in 2021, China's wind energy construction has set off a new climax. According to the data of China's National Energy Administration, the annual installed capacity of wind power should reach at least 35-40GW to achieve the above objectives. According to the current mainstream design of 3 to 4MW single unit capacity, at least 10,000 fans will be installed every year.
Today, after the parity of onshore wind power and offshore wind power, China's wind power industry has improved a lot.
It is not only reflected by the stability of development scale, the richness of models, the advancing of the technology and efficient service, but also by some industry-leading host equipment manufacturers.
The manufacturers have stood the time of years and gone global - Mingyang Smart Energy Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mingyang Smart Energy), ranked 18th among the global top 500 new energy enterprises in 2021. HARTING has always been seen in the process. HARTING does not just solve the electrical connection pain points when it comes to the wind power equipment, but also creates more customer value.
Creating connection value
For wind energy, reliable connections must be guaranteed to ensure power generation and data communication. The power connection between high-power components can be realised through the connectors, and the data and signal transmission required for facility monitoring can also be provided.
Mingyang Smart Energy adopts a unique semi-direct drive wind turbine design, which can effectively reduce the cost of equipment transportation and hoisting, and the project construction cost. However, this design means smaller cabin space, and the hydraulic system needs to be located outside the cabin. In this way, on the current set of fan unit, about 300 cables are connected from the two engine room cabinets to the outside, including hydraulic system, yawing motor, generator control, main shaft and so on. “If the traditional cable gland is still used for connection, it will bring a series of problems,” explained by Shuai Wang, Key Account Manager Goldwind, HARTING China. “Since the cabin space is very limited, a large number of glands which are required for each cable would occupy the limited space and would also make the construction and maintenance very inconvenient. It takes about three days to assemble a cabin module.”
To ensure the connection between electric control cabinets is always safe and reliable is the first priority. Remote and harsh environment often come into people’s minds when discussing about wind farms, especially offshore wind power, which is always high humidity, heavy salt fog, long-day treatment and harsher corrosive environment. They pose severe challenges to the corrosion protection of control and distribution components related to offshore wind power equipment. Han® series of industrial grade connectorsby HARTING for Mingyang Smart Energy,with IP68 or even IP69 protection grade,meet the requirements of C4 or C5-H saltfog resistance grade, so that the operatorscan feel at ease and reliable to operate the equipment.
HARTING wind power team adopted 10 sets of Han® connectors portable and compact to connect 300 cables. Han®’s rapid termination technology and built-in plug-in jumper technology helps Mingyang no longer need to use the original wiring terminals. As thus, the material cost of Mingyang Smart Energy has decreased, and at the same time, it helps to save a lot of on-site assembly time. “Now the assembly of three engine room modules can be completed in one day!” said by Shuai Wang.
This prefabricated connection scheme is not only easy to be completed, but also will show no wiring errors since all wiring is prefabricated. The consistency and stability of all connectors are greatly improved, and the failure points of equipment operation and maintenance in the later stage are reduced.
According to Mingyang Smart Energy, HARTING's products fully meet the quality requirements of the wind energy industry and bring a series of advantages of reliability,simplicity, being free from maintenance and controllable cost, which is worthy of comprehensive application and promotion.
