About BladeCleaning

BladeCleaning, S.A. is founded with the objective of design, manufacture, commercialize and operate a new autonomous blade cleaning system that eliminates the disadvantages of the traditional cleaning methods.

Numerous tests have been carried out since 2004 to fine tweak the system components to adequate them to the requirements of a wind farm in operation. During this design process several prototypes were built and tested both in laboratory conditions and in real wind farms in La Muela, Zaragoza, Spain.

x Close First system drafts including electrovalves   x Close First system setup drafts in the early stages of design   x Close First system setup drafts in the early stages of design   x Close Field tests with electrovalves in the first design stages in La Muela, Zaragoza

Patent The BladeCleaning system holds a utility model patent certificate since October 2004

x Close BladeCleaning's utility model patent certificate

Field tests

The final field tests were carried out in Magallón 26 wind farm in Zaragoza, Spain. The system was installed with different configurations to compare the results against traditional cleaning methods.

x Close Manual cleaning operation in Magallon 26 wind farm

x Close Pressurized water manual cleaning in a turbine of Magallón 26 wind farm

x Close Installing BladeCleaning

x Close Field tests of BladeCleaning. Note the different spray aperture angle setup and flow direction

Test wind farm: Magallón 26

The system was fully installed in Magallón 26 wind farm in 2007 and is fully operational since then. The data extracted is serving as a long term database of how the regular cleaning of a wind farm affects its performance. This wind farm owns a water tank designed specifically for its needs.

x Close Autonomous pressure equipment designed for Magallon 26 wind farm

x Close Autonomous pressure equipment operating in wind farm

x Close Prototype

x Close BladeCleaning operating in Magallón 26

These are the results of one of the first cleanings carried out in turbine number 7 the 11th June 2007:

x Close Power curve showing the modification of the output of the turbine. Red: before the cleaning. Green: after the cleaning.

Red dots represent the power curve before the cleaning and green after the cleaning. Wind conditions were relatively calm after 11th June so there are not enough data over 12 m/s to display a neat curve.

However it is clear how cleaning the blades 'pushes' the plot to the left on the ascending section, meaning that for a given windspeed the power output is greater.

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