From Carryback to Crisis Avoided – Gold Mining
How Vibration Monitoring Caught a Compound Failure Before It Stopped a Gold Mine’s Processing Plant.
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The Wind Energy Operations and Maintenance Australia conference (WOMA2026) is a rapidly growing event focussed purely on the operations and maintenance of Wind energy assets. A key theme from the event was that Asset owners are taking a much stronger interest in the management of their assets. While many are locked into long term maintenance and operations service contracts with OEMs (FSAs), it was clear that Asset Owners have a strong interest in taking greater control of the management of their assets.
Industry leaders such as Tilt and AGL noted the importance of having more access to asset data, whether it equipment drawings, SCADA data or condition monitoring data. The data is required to understand the condition of assets and hold OEMs to account for maintaining assets in a way that will maximise their life. As many OEMs tightly control this information, Asset Owners see a greater need for “Shadow monitoring”, whereby they either monitor existing datasets from SCADA, or install their own sensors to directly monitoring the condition of the asset.
When asked what components wind operators would like to see Condition Monitoring Systems better detect failures on operators reported components in the following order of importance:
Conventionally, blade pitch bearing failures have been monitored via grease monitoring. Access to repeatable grease samples is a key issue here. The technology that seems to present the greatest promise for monitoring these more accurately is proximity probes to measure bearing clearances.
Blade and bolt failures are best monitored for using non-destructive testing methods. Visual inspection using UAVs, Lightening protection system surveys using UAVs and crawler based Phased Ultrasound Array Testing were noted as emerging technologies that might be most beneficial for blades. Bolt failures are best monitored using ultrasonic inspection methods.
There was some discussion on detecting planetary bearing failures. Vibration analysis is very effective for generator bearing monitoring and there are opportunities to deploy systems like the Waites Wireless vibration monitoring system for shadow monitoring. On planetary gearboxes, vibration analysis is inadequate for the detection of many failure modes. The slow rotating nature, complex drive-train and the poor transmission paths from gears and bearings to externally mounted vibration sensors limits the efficacy of vibration based monitoring techniques for these components. Online Oil condition monitoring presents the greatest promise for effectively monitoring planetary gearboxes. Technologies such as Atten2’s OilWear 2.0 have been developed in collaboration with Wind Energy operators and OEMS and can effectively detect the earliest signs of bearing and gear wear by closely monitoring wear particles in the gearbox lubrication system.
The need for greater quality controls and precision installation and maintenance was also highlighted so that asset operators know their equipment is delivered and set up to maximise overall life. Laser geometric measurement and alignment has a key role to play in precision maintenance. Easy-Laser are a leader in this field and have geometric systems that can measure tower flanges, wind blade root flanges and hub flanges accurately to ensure they are flat and do not put unnecessary strain on bolts. Specific wind energy focused systems have been developed with specific bracketry to ease the alignment of wind turbine drivetrains and minimise the stress on rotating components.
Wind Energy in Australia has an exciting future and for those of us working on in reliability and precision maintenance there are some interesting challenges ahead. WOMA2026 was a very insightful event and if you are working in operations and maintenance in the renewable energy sector, we would highly recommend you consider attending next year’s event.
How Vibration Monitoring Caught a Compound Failure Before It Stopped a Gold Mine’s Processing Plant.
Unplanned downtime is often viewed as an operational inconvenience, an unavoidable part of running complex manufacturing assets. However, the reality is far more serious. Downtime is more than a maintenance concern, it’s a major financial, operational and strategic risk that steadily undermines profitability across an entire business.
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