Your wind turbine’s power and data cables may be wearing faster than you think

The drip loop is the bundle of cables responsible for carrying all the power, data, signals, and communication for everything generated inside a nacelle. The loop is needed to provide enough slack for the turbine to yaw a few revolutions keeping it pointed into the wind.

While the cables in this loop meet wind industry standards, especially for torsion, oil resistances, and temperature, current industry practice of tightly bundling them has serious impacts.

The biggest problem with closely arranging cables in this manner is there can be as many as 16 tightly bundled together, twisting and rubbing against each other. This arrangement creates excessive heat and wears down the jacket insulation, ultimately exposing a cable conductor which can carry between 600 to 1,000V.

This wear can appear only a few months after the start of operations but is often missed or overlooked during end-of-warranty inspections or when competing with other major corrective action.

It’s no surprise that the abrasion issue can eventually lead to turbine faults and downtime, and in worst cases, serious injury to technicians. “Over the past 15 years, I have visited many wind farms with trash containers filled with worn cables that had been cut out of the drip loop,” says Jim Moorman, Wind Industry Manager at Lapp USA, a global cable manufacturer.
Three wind-industry specialists have recognized the problem and joined forces to deliver a device that solves the premature cable wear issue along with expert installation. The companies, System One Services, Hydac, and Lapp USA, collaborated on the design of the SOHL, a turnkey cable-management system, able to address the issue of drip loop cable tear

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