New Whitepaper From WEBS and Wind Energy Update Lends Critical Clarity to Wind Reliability Benchmarking in a Complex Post Warranty Market

Dallas, Texas, April 4, 2017 (Newswire.com) - In advance of the USA’s leading wind O&M event, a new free-access wind reliability benchmarking whitepaper offers turbine professionals and portfolio managers critical clarity of vision on how best to approach turbine failure rates, particularly as major assets reach the challenging post warranty transition.

“With such a high percentage of turbines approaching the critical post warranty period, there will no doubt be as many questions as there are opportunities for both owner operators and the supply chain,” said Jon Harman, Managing Director at Wind Energy Update which is hosting the Wind O&M Dallas 2017 event.

"At a time of decreasing subsidies and record low auction prices for onshore wind, a trend expected to continue over the next 3-5 years, the wind industry can ill afford to operate with such uncertainty around asset reliability,"

Keith Harrison, Founder & Head of Knowledge Management at WEBS

The good news is that a free white paper that examines the relationship between turbine type and reliability is available to download right now from globally renowned benchmarking experts, Wind Energy Benchmarking Services (WEBS).

This reliability benchmarking whitepaper contains more than 19 different tables, graphs and figures highlighting reliability trends and benchmarked failure rates. Data is used to analyse turbines, grouped by technology and nameplate capacity, to identify mean time to failure and mean repair time per failure.

The O&M landscape has changed considerably in recent times. “At a time of decreasing subsidies and record low auction prices for onshore wind, a trend expected to continue over the next 3-5 years, the wind industry can ill afford to operate with such uncertainty around asset reliability,” explains Keith Harrison, Founder & Head of Knowledge Management at WEBS.

Operators, asset managers and those responsible for overall project operations are now assessing the value of independent service providers’ (ISPs) maintenance contracts. Cost is often highlighted as important in choosing an ISP vs the OEM end-of-warranty package option.

Turbines using doubly-fed induction machine technology fail more often, and experience longer repair times per failure, compared with other turbine technologies, according to analysis. Results also suggest that no one single trend can be attributed to onshore turbine - reliability varies by technology and according to generation capacity.

Overall, research by WEBS shows that benchmarking is the answer. It says that operators will need to share data, knowledge and best practices, to ensure that projects don’t exist in an information vacuum.

Operators of larger fleets, such as utilities, are able to benchmark internally to better understand turbine reliability. However, even those operators benefit from learning from industry peers.

Both the oil & gas industry, and the gas turbine industry have been benchmarking themselves over a long period of time, and unless the wind industry follows suit and seizes opportunities to change, it will struggle achieve the same level of market maturity.

Clearly data is an indispensable tool for owners looking to negotiate contracts, prioritize maintenance and boost energy generation.

“It’s incredibly reassuring to know that future operational decisions, service contracts and technological innovations can be grounded in unique, unbiased and accessible reliability benchmarking data as offered by WEBS,” concluded Harman.

Download your own copy of the white paper here.

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CONTACT

Kerr Jeferies

Project Director | Wind Energy Update

[email protected]

T. 1800 814 3459 ext 7565

Source: Wind Energy Update