Huadian Lingwu Power Plant is located in Lingwu, Yinchuan, Ningxia. Its second-phase 2×1000MW units were put into operation on December 28, 2010 and April 25, 2011, respectively. It is the world's first ultra-supercritical coal-fired air-cooling generator units. The air-cooling island is located on a 50-meter-high steel frame platform outside the main building, each using a 10×8 fan cooling units, totaling 160 fans.

Since operation of the air-cooling units in Lingwu Power Plant, the air-cooling island has been suffering from problems of great vibration of fans, motors and bridges, with vibration speed reaching 30mm/s, which has caused broken gear teeth and leakage of the fan gear box, bearing runoff of the motor bearing seat, damaged bearings and broken rotor bars; wear and oil leakage of the lubricating oil pump; and wear of couplers. More seriously, long-term strong vibration will cause metal fatigue in the air-cooling island bridge and thus easy to cause major safety accidents. From 2011 when #3 & 4 units were put into operation to August, 2014, the second-phase air-cooling island had damaged gear shafts in more than 80 air-cooling fan gearbox and damage of multiple motor bearings and couplers, resulting in direct economic loss of more than six million yuan.

In February, 2014, technical experts of BKC visited Lingwu Power Plant many times and arrived at an overall solution through applying equipment management concept combining advanced analytical technologies and sophisticated testing instruments and guided by the equipment management concepts combining macro and micro. According to the solution, the project was commissioned on July 5 after one-month intensive construction renovation. As a result, the vibration value dropped from the original 33mm/s to 2.87mm/s, much lower than the national standard of 7.1mm/s. The single fan test showed remarkable effect.

The permanent magnet eddy current coupler was used in the solution, since it works by the slip principle, which generates a rotational speed difference between the driven machine and the driver machine during operation. After the experimental renovation test, the slip of the permanent magnet eddy current coupler is about 2%-5%. The test data indicates no evident change in such indices as the cooling efficiency and energy consumption of the air-cooling island, meaning that the expected technical indicators can be achieved.

The permanent magnet eddy current coupler has been used for the following considerations: first, the shaft connection between the motor and the load is non-contact, so that vibration of the load will not be transmitted to the motor; second, no damage to the bearings and seals caused by direct shaft connection in long-term operation will happen, to ensure availability of equipment; third, it has absolute advantages against the traditional couplers in aspects of maintenance workload and maintenance cost, service life, energy saving effect, installation and commissioning, and daily maintenance. In the long run, the permanent magnet eddy current coupler has cost strength over the life cycle of the equipment, especially its service life of 20-30 years, which is unmatched by the traditional ones. Besides it has small daily maintenance workload, is capable of soft start and overload protection and has technical advantages irreplaceable by traditional couplers.