Page 14 - North American Clean Energy January/February 2020 Issue

wind power
Why Turbine Uptime is Crucial for Wind Farm Efficiency
by Bruce Hall
WIND ENERGY IS ONE OF THE FASTEST
growing sources of energy production globally, projected to provide almost a third of the USA’s energy needs by 2050 . In order to achieve these projections – and ensure the profitability of their assets - wind farm owners and operators must take advantage of the latest technologies available to them.
Why is turbine uptime important?
A key part of creating efficiencies to ensure profitability is maximizing turbine uptime. This
is the core goal of wind turbine operations and maintenance (O&M). Turbine uptime, or availability, involves making sure that the assets on a wind farm are fully functional during critical energy generation periods. Essentially, it means they are working when the wind is high. The costs of failing to maximize turbine uptime can be considerable, and will only increase with the trend for larger turbines.
The missed potential profit due to the unavailability of a failed turbine can be up to $2,000 per day, per turbine, based on a 4.2MW turbine. With larger turbines, those losses will
increase accordingly. The logistical
difficulties in some regions of offshore
turbine repair mean it can take weeks
or months to complete a repair in
this environment. With the advent of
floating wind farms far out at sea, the
complexity of onsite maintenance and
repairs will become a greater challenge.
Bear in mind that these numbers don’t include the repairs themselves (the costs for which are considerable due to the hazardous and labor- intensive conditions offshore). Offshore
maintenance also involves specialized crew transfer vessels, highly skilled technicians and engineers, and cranes, as well as the replacement parts. Moreover, sending personnel up wind turbines is risky, and should be done only when necessary. All of this
not only stretches O&M budgets, but also demands additional planning time from O&M teams.
How predictive maintenance increases turbine uptime
To prevent these costly wind turbine failures, it is necessary to catch problems before they become more serious. The best way to do this is through predictive maintenance, which strikes a balance between the expensive “run to fail” reactive model of O&M, and the preventative maintenance that spends unnecessary money on regularly scheduled replacements.
Predictive maintenance uses the latest digital technologies to enable a more intelligent, strategic method of O&M. Using cost-effective sensors installed in wind turbines to monitor data streams (including vibration, oil condition and temperature)
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