Efficient blade heating

keeps the blades ice free!

Ice build-up

leads to production loss and often to complete standstills!

20 Years of Field Proven Lifetime!

Wicetec helps You to prevent icing on wind turbine blades!

We offer wind turbine blade heating technologies, for example heater technology and control technology, and system integration services for wind turbine and blade manufacturers. For wind farm owners Wicetec offers WIPS Ice Prevention System as retrofit solution to existing wind turbines, and blade heating control system modernizations.

CALCULATE THE BENEFIT OF WIPS FOR YOUR PROJECT!

Maximum energy production through the winter

Wicetec Ice Prevention System (WIPS) keeps wind turbine running through the icy winter months. It enables efficient energy production in the cold season with strong winds and high electricity prices. WIPS allows continuous turbine operation. Because of WIPS, no stoppages for heating cycles are needed. It is designed to withstand severe icing to give you a real “winter ride-through” feature! Operating principle is anti-icing: it prevents ice formation thanks to fast heaters and sensitive ice detection.

With Wicetec Ice Prevention System, you can avoid harmful ice-induced downtimes with extended standstills and numerous re-start attempts. This increases the lifetime of the turbines and lowers the maintenance costs of bearings, gearbox and other components.

In wind energy project financing, the uncertainty of energy yield calculations plays an important role. Icing of wind turbines in cold climates increases this uncertainty. With Wicetec Ice Prevention System, this increase of uncertainty can be omitted. Less uncertainty means lower financing costs, and vice versa.

Patented heating element technology

The core of Wicetec Ice Prevention System is the unique worldwide patented carbon fabric heater technology. The heaters are only a thin layer just under the blade surface, located on the blade parts that are critical to power production. These near-surface-heaters give a fast response and keep the area free from ice. The proven lifetime of the heater technology is 20 years. First industrial size wind turbines with WIPS technology have been in operation since 1998 and are still going strong!

WIPS technology can be adapted to all typical wind turbine blades and blade production processes. Several different blade types have been already equipped with the heater technology. Common believe is that lightning risk cannot be handled when using carbon fabric heaters. However, that is not true. Many blades with WIPS have been tested according to IEC 61400-24 standard (Lightning protection of wind turbines) and the tests have been passed. Myth busted!

Currently more than 700 MW of installed wind power capacity are equipped with this carbon fabric heating element technology!

Intelligent control

Wicetec Ice Prevention System is controlled by a rugged industrial real-time controller boosted with wind farm level SCADA system. Reliable and sensitive ice detection enables heating only when needed, thus minimizing the used electricity consumption. Typical energy consumption of WIPS is less than 0.3% of the Annual Energy Production (AEP).
WIPS has flexible communication interfaces for easy integration to other systems and for remote service support.