The Rising Demand for Energy: A Potential for Optical Fiber Sensors in the Monitoring Sector

摘要

For a long time electric power was taken as a natural unlimited resource. With globalization the demand for energy has risen. This has brought rising prices for fossil fuels, as well as a diversification of power generation. Besides conventional fossil, nuclear plants are coming up again. Renewable energy sources are gaining importance resulting in recent boom of wind energy plants. In the past reliability and availability and an extremely long lifetime were of paramount importance. Today this has been added by cost, due to the global competition and the high fuel costs. New designs of power components have increased efficiency using lesser material. Higher efficiency causes inevitably higher stress on the materials, of which the machines are built. As a reduction of lifetime is not acceptable and maintenance costs are expected to be at a minimum, condition monitoring systems are going to being used now. This offers potentials for fiber optic sensor applications.