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Survey Says 60% of US Wind Turbines May Be Behind in Maintenance

September 5, 2008 | 15 Comments

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California, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com] Frontier Pro Services has released the results of an informal survey of approximately 75 wind farm operators in the United States. Designed to assess the specific operation and maintenance service needs of wind energy operators, the survey reveals what could be serious threats to wind farms largely because of the industry-wide shortage of qualified turbine technicians, Frontier said.

According to the findings, many wind farm operations and maintenance teams are so resource constrained that they are barely able to keep up with the unscheduled maintenance repairs their wind turbines require to continue generating electricity. Even regular, scheduled preventative-maintenance like oil changes and gearbox lubrication (services that are often still under warranty) are falling behind as manufacturers face similar resource struggles related to the shortage of qualified technicians.

Gearbox failures account for the largest amount of downtime, maintenance, and lose of power production. These costly failures can total 15-20% of the price of the turbine itself, making wind turbine and gearbox maintenance a high priority.

“Most gearbox failures are preventable,” said Jack Wallace, lead technical advisor for Frontier Pro Services. “Most gearboxes fail as a direct result of improper lubrication and lack of routine maintenance. With so many turbines behind on inspections and regular service, there is real cause for concern here,” Mr. Wallace continued.

If oil is not properly monitored and replaced as needed, bearing and gear wear will lead to more serious and costly damage to the drive train. According to Frontier, when a US $1,500 bearing fails unnoticed, it can lead to production loss and revenue loss including an unscheduled replacement of a US $100,000 dollar gearbox and a unscheduled crane cost of up to US $70,000 to access the failed components.

The Frontier Pro Services Operations & Maintenance survey was conducted through a combination of informal phone interviews and in-person meetings with operations and maintenance technicians, wind farm operators, and wind farm owners during the first six months of 2008.

For more information about the survey, click here.

The results of this survey come as earlier this year a 200-foot Vestas wind turbine near the city of Århus in Denmark disintegrated in high winds when a blade came loose and hit the central tower, causing the whole structure to collapse. Two days later a blade broke off of a turbine near Sidinge, Denmark.

Wind Power

15 Reader Comments

Comment
1 of 15

denny-houghton-50945

September 6, 2008

Turbine maintenance can be a great job for certain people. If you can climb 300 feet, carrying your tools and materials and work around high voltages under hazardous conditions; it might be for you. It is difficult physical work which requires a high level of technical skill. The views from the towers are spectacular and you do not often have the boss looking over your shoulder

Access to good training and high pay will solve this labor shortage.

The responsibility for training and recruitment falls directly on Wind Project Developers. Stop complaining and worrying, start doing; long before the blades start turning.

Comment
2 of 15

denny-houghton-50945

September 7, 2008

fireofenergy;

The state of Oregon apparently has a turbine technician training program. Probably Texas and California, too. IBEW linemen also train for this work. It is important to be willing to climb but only because it gets your well-trained brain to where the work is. Get a job painting towers while you train.

It is said that turbine technician experience is measured in "Dog Years" on a resume. Good luck

Comment
3 of 15

jim-tanner-69899

September 8, 2008

Why am I not surprised?

The truth is that it takes a whole different mindset
and skill set to get an operation financed, located, documented and
installed than it does to do the
slow and steady maintenance on one of these facilities.

I heard a talk in the Texas Panhandle where they were
only looking for 2 guys: a computer operator and a maintenance
man for their whole operation. If you are the only guy
climbing up several of those towers every day, any
of the normal activities that require personal time off
or extra attention will eventually put you behind.

Comment
4 of 15

denny-houghton-50945

September 8, 2008

If it takes 600-900 people to run a nuclear power plant (1.0 GW nameplate) how many should it take to operate 1.1 Gw nameplate of wind turbines?

I know that it is more than two; even with a Mac.

Three technicians were involved with this accident in Oregon it was essentially a training deficiency which precipitated massive equipment failure. Technology was blamed since the control system did not prevent operator error. Somebody pushed the wrong button, somebody else died.

http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2008/02/27/oregon-osha-releases-report-about-fatal-wind-farm-accident/

Comment
5 of 15

john-broughton-40988

September 9, 2008

This is an excellent article, as it brings to the forefront a critical issue to those investing in multimillion dollar machinery, such as wind turbines. That point being that one must budget for the proper operations & maintenance (O&M) of these wind farms. At this stage of the wind industry (as well as other renewable energy, ie solar, geothermal, hydro) there is little data regarding optimum costs for O&M. And based on the proposals and estimates budgeting for O&M I have seen through the years I would advise potential clients to thoroughly understand this issue. As I believe they have been quite low.
Again an excellent article and recommendation for more data finding on O&M for these very large capital investments.
jb
www.nrgmanager.com

Comment
6 of 15

tim-gard-25916

September 10, 2008

Its interesting how this works. Those looking for start up investment know if the numbers are too high, investors will decline involvement. So the start up numbers are shaved down to make the whole thing smell better. Then once the physical commitment is made, like the device being built and put online, the other 'essential' pieces are noted. Like, 'Oh by the way, this thing has killed someone.' Or 'Gee, did we mention this thing needs regular maintenance by highly skilled people so we gotta knock a couple a hundred grand off the profits?' Who is really at fault here, the developers the engineers or the investors? I believe the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the developers. I know my wife would be asking some hard questions of these people if I were killed in one of these monsters. Like why didn't this thing have remote powerup capabilities? But what the hay, we lost a couple of non essentials when steam boilers began blowing up a couple hundred years ago. The Rockafellas' still made billions.

Comment
7 of 15

tblakeslee

September 10, 2008

Newer wind turbine designs like Clipper Windpower newest are so large that they have a service elevator inside the tower. Three redundant generators make the failure of a single generator only result in reduced output. The new generator is replaced from inside using the elevator. Actually the tower is like a 35-story high-rise building with an office built-in. BWEN.OB has a maintinence division for wind torers.

Comment
8 of 15

chuck-conover-55161

September 10, 2008

Not that solar is better, (we need a combination of wind, solar and geothermal), but there's next to no maintenance with solar, and huge maintenance costs with nuclear and coal plants. I wonder what the adjusted costs are for each of these technologies?

Comment
9 of 15

maurice-turgeon-59742

September 10, 2008

Now that the wind power industry is recognized as a viable source of energy keeping them on-line 24/7. There are lubricating systems on the market which monitor and lubricate critical bearings 24/7. If a bearing doesn't receive lubrication alarms go off and systems shut down.

Changing gearcase lubricant can be automated also, so no downtime occurs.

Managers are often guilty of assuming low maintenance means no maintenance.

Comment
10 of 15

GregorGiebel

September 10, 2008

This story ties in nicely with a recent article in Windpower Monthly, the main industry gazette. With more than just a raised eyebrow they noted that condition monitoring of the rotating machine, a technique quite often employed by the larger European operators of wind power, was very little used in the US. Especially in Germany, it is now nearly required to get an insurance for a large turbine, which boosted the market tremendously. At least a dozen firms are competing on the market, and all have shown good experiences with the system.
If lack of technicians is a problem, then more automation and longer maintenance intervals could be part of the solution, or am I missing something here?

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11 of 15

maurice-turgeon-59742

September 11, 2008

Good point Gregor sounds like a solution to the unemployment problem.

Comment
12 of 15

f-berry-47814

September 11, 2008

Good technical jobs only pay $18-20 an hour to start, because in states like Iowa where wind power is becoming stronger, making 38K a year is alot of money for anyone.

Highly skilled technicians doing this work should be making 70-100K a year.

All the Best,

Comment
13 of 15

gurusamy-sokkalingam-151381

September 11, 2008

Very nice article , It exatly reflects the current sutitution of WTG maintanance in US. As a wind turbine service provider in India we feel our country is little bit better than the US in Gear Box Failure rates, this may because of our Trained, Experianced, good and Cheap technical man power.
Any how we would like to use your experiance / article for improving our day to day maintanance activities.
Thanks for the article.
- Gurusamy sokkalingam from Tamil Nadu / India - www.indodanish.net

Comment
14 of 15

scott-greenbaum-48827

September 11, 2008

These are the high paying green tech jobs everyone is talking about. I do not see any problem retraining an unemployeed factory worker to do this work compared to the alterantive of flipping burgers at McDonalds. It pays better too.

The Boston IBEW provides this training and has installed a wind turbine to practice on.

Comment
15 of 15

maurice-turgeon-59742

September 11, 2008

I worked for a company that leased their equipment to the private sector back in the 70's. I was paid about $12 an hour to maintain 99.9% uptime or the end user would not have to pay my company's lease that month. The equipment had nuclear sensors hooked up to computerized, automated controls. My equipment was always available 24/7 but so was I. We never had equipment down very long.

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