The latest research from Wind Energy Update reveals that despite the huge amount of attention given to gearbox failure, electrical faults are a leading cause of offshore wind turbine downtime.
Failures of electrical and controls systems are the root cause of wind turbine repairs in 50% of cases, and operators should expect an electronic or electrical subassembly failure every 2 to 2.5 years, according to Wind Energy Update’s Offshore operations and Maintenance report 2011, released today.
According to the report’s authors, while the failure rate event of electrical system and control faults/failures may not have the highest associated downtime, a higher frequency of occurrence translates into the highest mean annual downtime.
“Electrical systems and components continue to cause relatively high rates of failure, and often result in unplanned servicing campaigns, because they are not as predictable as other types of failures,” explain the authors.
This is because generators, converters, conductors and transformers components require particular attention, and because condition-monitoring techniques are not always reliable enough to successfully conduct in-time prognosis.
With balance-of-plant outages, alone, taking from 1 to 8 months to solve, an exhaustive list of components failure, covering export cables, power collectors, converters, switchgears and substations makes this report an indispensable guide to offshore turbine maintenance.
