Wind tower project thanks to cooperation of technology leaders

The ques­tion of how best to avoid dam­age to a wind tur­bine when light­ning strikes the tow­er of the exposed tur­bine was addressed by sim­u­la­tion experts from DEHN in a project togeth­er with the Max Bögl group of com­pa­nies. Both com­pa­nies now ben­e­fit from the results.

In order to opti­mize the light­ning pro­tec­tion con­cept for the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of its wind tow­er sys­tem, the Max Bögl group of com­pa­nies from Sen­gen­thal coop­er­at­ed with the Neu­markt-based light­ning pro­tec­tion spe­cial­ist for more than three years. Recent­ly, the two part­ners suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the project, which brought new sci­en­tif­ic find­ings to light.

In addi­tion to its core com­pe­tence of con­struc­tion, the Max Bögl Group is also very suc­cess­ful in devel­op­ing holis­tic regen­er­a­tive ener­gy con­cepts, which the com­pa­ny plans and imple­ments both at its own sites and for oth­er indus­tri­al companies.

“When we start­ed to devel­op our wind tow­er mb 2.0 a few years ago, we not only want­ed to improve man­u­fac­tur­ing, assem­bly and trans­port, but also to opti­mize the light­ning pro­tec­tion concept.”

- Josef Bayer

With the pre­vi­ous­ly known meth­ods, the light­ning pro­tec­tion for the new type of wind tow­er could only be cal­cu­lat­ed inad­e­quate­ly. Only a few kilo­me­ters away from the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters in Sen­gen­thal, the com­pa­ny found the right part­ner for this chal­leng­ing task in the light­ning pro­tec­tion expert.

DEHN devel­ops and pro­duces prod­ucts for light­ning, surge and indus­tri­al pro­tec­tion and also oper­ates a mod­ern test cen­ter at its main site in Neu­markt. Cus­tomers can have the light­ning and surge pro­tec­tion of their prod­ucts, plants and sys­tems test­ed here. Clients from the wind ener­gy sec­tor reg­u­lar­ly make use of the com­pa­ny’s ser­vices. Nev­er­the­less, the task of sim­u­lat­ing light­ning and surge pro­tec­tion on a tow­er with a height of more than 100 meters and test­ing it in the lab­o­ra­to­ry was any­thing but com­mon­place for the employ­ees at the Test Centre.

“We used com­plex cal­cu­la­tions to sim­u­late where the light­ning flows along when it strikes the wind tow­er” said Dr. Mar­tin Han­nig, com­put­er sim­u­la­tion spe­cial­ist. “We then ver­i­fied this sit­u­a­tion in lab­o­ra­to­ry tests and exam­ined the effects of the cal­cu­lat­ed surges and light­ning cur­rents in more detail,” explains Bernd Moos­burg­er, test engi­neer. A spe­cial light­ning cur­rent gen­er­a­tor was also used, which is one of the most pow­er­ful mod­els of its kind in the world. The sys­tem makes it pos­si­ble to gen­er­ate very high light­ning cur­rents. The result of the test tri­als: The elab­o­rat­ed light­ning pro­tec­tion con­cept passed the tests, which Max Bögl can now cer­ti­fy to its cus­tomers by means of a test certificate.

For the com­pa­ny, the order, which ini­tial­ly start­ed as a ser­vice, devel­oped into an infor­ma­tive research project. In the wind tow­er of a wind tur­bine in Dein­ing in the dis­trict of Neu­markt, the engi­neers installed the inno­v­a­tive DEHN­de­tect mea­sur­ing sys­tem. It mea­sures the light­ning cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion under real con­di­tions. The DEHN­de­tect light­ning cur­rent mea­sur­ing sys­tem records long-term and impulse cur­rents. The sim­u­la­tions can thus be ver­i­fied. With the help of DEHN­de­tect, com­put­er sim­u­la­tions can be com­pared with the effect of real lightning.