Overview

Albany Wind Farm is an 18 turbine wind farm with the southern hemisphere’s largest wind turbines. It has the capacity to meet 80% of Albany’s power needs.

Geomotion were appointed by WSP to provide a monitoring system for the farm. The aim of the project is to monitor the service life of the turbine foundations at Albany wind farm.

By installing tiltmeters on the base of three of the twelve turbines our client is intending to establish the extent of foundation movement, the extent of fatigue damage on the tensioned ground anchors and the extent of fatigue damage to the concrete foundation.

Geomotion Works

Geomotion installed two Biaxial Tiltmeters to each of the three chosen turbines at 90° angles form one another with the intention of monitoring the vertical movement of the foundation in four directions. The sensors where glued to the base of each turbine mast using high strength epoxy resin glue, each covered with a protective metal vandal proof cover.

To allow the client to gain near-real time data of the foundation movement we attached these sensors to YDOC, Model number WL-N315ADS Data loggers. These loggers record the tilt on a 15 minute basis and provide a report email daily.