By Rauf Fattakh, Managing Director & Co-Founder at Prospero Events Group
If you are an Operations & Maintenance Manager at an onshore wind farm or you care about the reliability of wind turbines, then keep reading.
Do you track the wind turbine failure rate? How important is it to notice the main components that can deteriorate your wind turbine’s failure rate?
What is the failure rate?
The failure rate is the reciprocal value of the Mean Time between Failures (MTBF). This indicator shows how reliable your wind turbine or its specific components are. A wind turbine consists of a variety of components and systems from the gearbox to blades. But which one causes you the most headache?
Wind Turbines failure components rates
Top 5 onshore wind turbines components and systems that worsen failure rate according to an analysis of wind turbines reliability (descending rate order):
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Tower
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Gearbox
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Rotor blades
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Rotor hub
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Transformer
Components’ failure rates differ in offshore wind turbines. Your priority list order is different from your counterparts in the offshore domain as this comparative table shows based on the same analysis.
Painful repair costs
Recently the blade broke off at the 125MW Timber Road 4 project which was commissioned in the 1st half of 2020. When components fail repairment costs incur. Besides that, the parties involved should engage in a time-consuming investigation to find out the root causes of failures.
When failures rates rise
As Operations & Maintenance responsible at onshore wind farm you keep an eye on tower, gearbox, rotor blades, rotor hub, and transformer components and systems as a priority to prevent swings in failure rates. How do you feel when failure rates go up when everyone around wants maximum efficiency?
Improving the reliability of those components makes an amazing contribution to the efficiency of the overall onshore wind farm. For this purpose, using enhanced monitoring tools and predictive maintenance is handy.
Benchmarking the best-practices
On 14 & 15 September 2021 Prospero Events Group brings together experts at a virtual conference about ”Onshore Wind Farm Asset Optimisation & Performance Management 2020”. The expert panel will uncover analytical and monitoring tools used in minimizing wind turbine failures. Join this meeting to get all your questions answered by the best practitioners about fatigue analysis. About predictive maintenance. About turbine maintenance monitoring.