Bearing Type Improvements

General user experience indicates that a large population of installed wind turbine gearboxes are suffering defects and / or malfunctions in the planetary stage, either on the bearings or the gears. These defects and malfunctions in the gearbox result in unexpected, expensive service shutdowns.

Conventional practice is to repair the failed gearbox back to its original configuration without conducting root cause analysis of the failure followed up with corrective actions. This like for like repair often results in even further reduced remaining expected operational life after the service.

Moventas responded to this problem over 10 years ago with advanced and innovative design introduced through its own product range – 2-row integrated bearings. We have successfully validated this by field testing of many thousands of units ranging from 600kW up to 3MW wind turbines.