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Background

Renewable and non-renewable energy sit on either side of a sea-saw; the side with favourable economics and politics wins. The oil embargo of 1973 dramatically aected Europes and North Americas energy situation; the jolt of price increases, supply cuts and energy insecurity was felt immediately. In reaction, private and public institutions invested in wind turbines. The 1978 National Energy Act, the Power plant and Industrial Fuel Use Act prohibited the construction of new electric generation facilities to be red by oil or gas. The inertia continues today, not only for political but for economical reasons as well. 1970s surge of wind turbine development is documented in the IEEE paper Wind Energy - A Utility Respectiveby K.T.Fung et al (1981). Among many broad challenges, K.T. Fung et al. briey acknowledged the operation and maintenance challenge due to lack of accurate projections of component life limitations. The urgent nature of wind energy implementation is sensed which prioritized eorts on execution rather than asset management, operation and maintenance optimization.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to review existing literature to identify a gap between industry practices and research in wind O&M. During preliminary review it was found that academia has only recently been involved in wind facility O&M. For example, in a literature review performed by El-Thalji et al. (2012)in On the Operation and Maintenance Practice of Wind Power Asset it is suggested that the research falls under several categories (see table shown next) with the associated time frames in which research has been conducted. It is observed that academia has not focused on what I feel is an important matter in the industry, life extension of wind-turbines which is discussed later.

Table 1: Literature review categorization and time-frame from El-Thalji et al. (2012) Category Time frame Sub-category 1999-2007 Oshore 2007-2008 Onshore Environment inuence 2003-2011 Cold climate onshore 2006-2011 Desert climate 2006-2010 System and maintenance design 2004-2009 O&M cost estimation experience Operation and 2007-2008 Manufacturers experience design 2000-2008 O&M experiences 2010-2011 Dependability 2000-2011 Reliability and failure analysis Dependability 2003-2011 Wind turbine failure investigation and asset deterio2007-2011 Maintainability ration 2003-2007 Maintenance support 2003-2010 Availability 2005-2009 Diagnostic, prognostic applications 2003-2010 Experimental research 2007-2008 Practical research on-site Condition moni1998-2011 Mathematical models toring 2002-2010 Diagnostic and prognostic systems 2002-2001 Information technology 2009-2011 General 2009-2010 Opportunistic maintenance 2007-2010 Deterministic and probabilistic deterioration Physical asset op2008-2011 Inspection procedures and intervals timization 2006-2010 Condition based maintenance 2003-2006 Maintenance requirements

Wind turbine life extension

Majority of rst generation large wind turbine installations have reached their end of life. Surprisingly not enough academic research has been conducted in this area. There are industry guidelines available from EPRI and Germanischer Lloyd. T. Faber and K.Hansen (2012) identify two basic approaches for wind turbine life extension. 1. Analytical assessment to verify continued operation This method follows existing procedures of a new turbine certication except that assessment reports from periodic monitoring is required to renew the analysis. 2. Physical inspection to verify continued operation This method involves strategic inspection using inspection plans and documentation. There are two examples that show the industry is getting ready for wind turbine refurbishment projects: 1. On September 2009 LGC Skyrota Wind Energy Corporation reported exponential growth in large wind turbine maintenance and refurbishment division. The company, in year 2009, experienced a 100% increase in units serviced. Long-term goals of the company included adding lifting capacity, in-house machining to eliminate outsourcing. 2. A $25,000 report Onshore Wind Turbines Life Extension is published by EPRI for industry users. Understanding that the current certied wind turbines have reached or about to reach the 20-year design life, the industry is considering the possibility of life extension programs. EPRI highlights that the wind industry is showing growing interest in accurate assessment of current wind turbines, cost eectiveness of these life extension programs and their economics. It is felt that an integrated approach is needed where cost benet analysis is coupled with inuencing factors such as emerging technology, social economics and maintenance support. The topic of wind-turbine life extension is emerging in the O&M and asset management market. To be able to develop a methodology, perform comparisons between strategies and implement an ecient life extension program, several fundamental ideas will have to be studied and innovative work from various elds will have to be integrated. The most fundamental starting point is the study of wind-turbine reliability from a deterministic 3

and probabilistic perspective. A wind turbine is a complex machine with mechanical, electrical and structural major components (listed in order of decreasing cost): 1. tower 2. blades 3. gearbox 4. generator/converter 5. bedplate 6. transformer 7. pitch system 8. hub 9. brake 10. yaw system J. Perez et al. (2013) categorized the main wind turbine designs that have been in use since late 1990s and presented their component failure rates and downtime for various conditions across the world. J. Perez et al. ultimately show that wind turbine blades and gearbox tend to lead to the greatest downtimes. Slightly dierent remarks are made by F. Spinato et al. (2009); they investigated the reliability of 6000 modern onshore wind turbine in Denmark and Germany over 11 years. From their analysis it is shown that the electrical systems, blades, converter, generator, hydraulics and gearbox have the highest failure rates, in descending order. F. Spinato et al. (2009) also signied the reliability comparison between direct drive and gear box turbines. Direct drive turbines experience a higher failure rate but a lower downtime than the gear box turbine. F. Spinato et al. make no recommendation on operation or maintenance strategy.