Aeolian Vibration Challenges at Renewable Substation Raj N.1, Kudalkar R.1 1ABB, India Online Published on 05 February, 2022. Abstract Renewable substations are key elements within the Power system as they evacuate the renewable power in to the grid. Healthy asset life and avoiding any abnormal conditions which reduce the asset performance/life is a key concern for all the developers & asset owners, hence during design planning stage it is necessary to take in to consideration the technology selected, switching configuration, maintenance and outage aspects, as all these directly affect the return on investments for the developers. Renewable substations come up quickly in short time and standardization of design concepts/assets are preferred for early installation and evacuation of power. The standardization may have its own advantages and challenges with different geography and sometimes this may have issues which may affect the asset/equipment life, one such typical challenge has been discussed in this paper. In a renewable evacuation 220kV substation, there had been equipment interconnection with 4inch heavy duty IPS Aluminium tube. Certain spans experienced Aeolian vibrations leading to massive vibrations of the equipment interconnection and leading to reduce the life time of the connected equipments as it yields a high stress at the terminal equipment. Also, there was a risk of reduced asset life and subsequently leading to equipment failure. Physical vibrations were observed & wind speed were recorded at the site, especially under the low wind conditions, records were made under different wind speed and then the analysis was done to find out the root cause of the problem and subsequently find a suitable solution to mitigate the vibrations observered within the substations. Simulation checks were done as per IEEE 605 -2008 to evaluate the effects of Aeolian vibrations in the rigid busbar equipment interconnection, out of total 110 spans, nearly 53% of the spans were affected. Parametric analysis was performed considering tube yield strength, span length, unit weight & wind speed. Equipment terminal thermography results were checked to see the effects of the tube vibrations and evaluating the effects of the terminal temperature rise, which could reduce the life of assets. Field observations, parametric analysis and different options were evaluated to find out the solution to the problem. Selection of the solution was done taking into consideration the outage aspects, revenue loss, safety aspects and other commercial aspects, including the involvement of any civil works in existing substation. Implementation of the best fit solution has helped to avoid any mechanical vibrations in equipment interconnection, reducing terminal stress, avoid any abnormal temperature rise at equipment terminal and thereby taking care of asset life. Top Keywords Aeolian Vibrations, Equipment interconnection, Asset life, Dampers, Aluminium tube. Top |