Helwig Carbon’s Wind Team provides customers with superior power and grounding solutions that are customizable to meet their desired outcomes and risk profiles. With our industry leading knowledge and advanced brush technology, plus a wide scope of offerings and world-class field service expertise, we can deliver service performance excellence.
Industry reports of poor brush life, low-quality brush holders, and wind turbine failures are frequent in OEM wind turbine generators, but by installing our premier aftermarket upgrades, you will see a significant increase in brush life performance & safety, decrease in maintenance, and overall improvement in reliability.
Helwig Carbon Advantages
Custom Engineered
to increase performance over OEM parts
Reliable & Durable
made for extreme tower environments
Superior protection against lightning strikes
Reduced maintenance
engineered to consider the maintenance professional’s needs
OEM Approved & ISO 9001:2015 Certified
Long-life brush grades virtually eliminate dusting
Optimal brush grade and spring force to protect slip rings from damage
Wind Energy Product Suite
Metalized Graphite Brushes
Power
- Custom Engineered brush grades virtually eliminate dusting and ring groove problems
- Brush life is expected to be increased compared to the original brush
Grounding
- High Durability grounding grades, ensure extended life
- Provides superior performance and protection against high surge occurrences
Brush Holder Kits
Custom engineered with exclusive features for all turbine applications
Kit Advantages
Constant Force Springs
- Improved replacement springs to replace the OEM springs
- Enhanced spring design extends brush life by applying constant pressure at the brush face
HQDs
- Impressively fast and easy way to change brushes
- No screws to remove, lose or replace!
- HQD’s lock together with a tight, positive locking action even under rough conditions
- Increase maintenance safety
Brush Wear Switches
- Improved switches provide accurate brush wear notifications down tower
- Electrical assembly comes fully assembled and organized with easy-snap plugs
- Dust & dirt proof easy-snap plugs
Pitch Motor Bearing Protection Kits™
Save your motor bearings from induced shaft currents using one of our easy-to-install axial bearing protection kits
Currently OEM approved with several wind pitch motor manufacturers
ES
GA
RES
Explore Wind Energy Services
Motor/Generator Test Lab
Our Milwaukee headquarters houses a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled, 2500 sq. foot motor test lab. We can replicate field conditions or customer specifications to provide accurate results for load, environment and duty cycle.
Over 150 stock motors to couple with your motor for life testing.
In this lab, we test our products in many capacities to engineer them for the toughest environments. We also offer motor testing to customers to help develop application-specific grades to improve motor performance.
Other Studies
- Grade Comparison Tests
- Performance Comparison Tests
- Life Tests
- Arcing Tests
- Black band Tests
- Contamination Tests
- Other
Up Tower Engineering Support
Our dedicated Wind Team provides problem diagnosis, installation guidance, part maintenance recommendations and
industry-leading brush & holder knowledge.
- Wind Team
- Comprised of wind engineers and technicians
- Climbing Certified
- Compliant to 29 CFR 1910 & 29 CFR 1926
- GWO 1001
Lightning Protection
With lightning strikes being a major concern for wind turbines, Helwig Carbon offers brushes and brush holders that meet the rigorous demands of lightning protection. Our brush grades perform well in electrical surges and are not prone to wear. Low resistivity ensures that electrical currents are directed away from crucial components. Our brushes and brush holders are unsurpassed in quality and are a perfect safeguard for your renewable energy investment.
Lightning Facts & Dangers
- A single bolt of lightning is around 50,000°F or 5X hotter than the surface of the sun.
- During the first year of operation of a newly installed wind turbine, 85% of down-time is lightning-related on a southwestern wind farm. Often totals for lightning-related damage and repair will exceed $250,000.
- There are two types of lightning, negative strikes and positive strikes. Positive strikes are 5 times more powerful than negative strikes.
- Lightning strike dangers increase with turbine height.
- Most lightning strikes average at 2-3 miles long and carry a current of 10000 Amps at 100million volts.
- Each second there are 50 to 100 Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes to the earth worldwide.
- A study in Germany of wind farms revealed that lightning strikes resulted in 80% of all insurance claims involving wind turbines.
- An average instance of lightning lasts about a quarter of a second and consists of 3-4 strikes
- The energy contained from a single lightning strike can power a 100 watt light bulb for 90 days.
Wind Energy Blog Posts
A lightning strike is the result of an electric discharge between the atmosphere and an object. Most cloud to ground strikes are concentrated to a physical location, which is referred to as a “termination”. Interestingly, the bright flash that we call a lightning strike is only about one inch in diameter, even though it seems to be much more significant to the naked eye, video, and photographs.
