A Novel E-Field Activity Detector Based on Gas Ionization for Wind Turbine Rotor Blades

Multi-megawatt-class wind turbine development continues the race of innovation and the limit in physical dimensions still has not found its boundaries. As an example, the first 12 MW offshore wind turbine was recently commissioned with a rotor blade's length of over 100 m and a height above 250 m. With the increase in dimensions, the risk of upward and downward direct lightning strikes to the wind turbine increases and the associated effects, such as, travelling waves, overvoltages and, consequently, of outages during its duty cycle also increases. This is the background for a development of a novel electric field (E-Field) activity sensor based on gas ionization, which may act as a sensor for early E-Field activity or early warning system, as a power source for a sensor that may send a signal, or as an optical source for an optical fiber detection system.