Lightning Fault Analysis

Lightning strikes can cause major damage to a wind turbine blade causing costly repairs and possible downtime. Having a tool that will allow you to see the location of a lightning strike in relation to your turbines, the magnitude and strike polarity will give you the information you need to determine if you should schedule inspections now. Early identification of lightning strikes can keep repair costs down, fixing damage when it is minor as opposed to undetected damage that worsens over time. Damage that can lead to major repairs costing thousands of dollars to repair or even more costly blade replacements.

Indji Watch is the most effective solution on the market for telling you if there was lightning within your wind farm, but can also tell you the distance between where the strike occurred and each turbine. The Lightning Damage Analyst makes it easy to quickly correlate if lightning occurred near a turbine, so you can save time directing maintenance crews to a specific location, instead of manually searching for the strike location.

 

Lightning damage to turbine blade

 

Indji Systems partners with Vaisala, who owns the National Lightning Detection Network, to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date storm and lightning data. The location accuracy has improved over the years and now plotting of the strikes can be accurate to within 100-150 meters. This accuracy is crucial to give you a high level of confidence in the location of the lightning event so that you only schedule inspections if there is a good chance they may find damage. To aid in your decision, Indji Systems can also send you a lightning report whenever strikes near your turbines have been detected. This report includes the same valuable information you can access in the Lightning Fault Analysis. Together, these tools are invaluable in helping you make inspection decisions.

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