Proceedings of the ASME 2018 Power and Energy Conference, PowerEnergy2018, June 24-28, 2018, Lake Buena Vista, FL, USA

Overview of Wind Turbine Field Failure Databases: A Discussion of the Requirements for an Analysis


Roozbeh Bakhshi and Peter Sandborn
CALCE, Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20740, USA

Abstract:

With renewable energy and wind energy in particular becoming a main stream mean s of energy production , the reliability aspect of wi nd turbine s and their sub assemblies has become a topic of interest for owners and manufacturers of wind turbines. Operation and Maintenance ( O&M costs account for more than 25 % of total costs of onshore wind projects. These costs are even higher for offs hore projects. Effective management of O&M costs of wind turbines depends on accurate failure prediction for sub assemblies. There are numerous models that predict failure times and O&M costs of wind farms. All these models have inputs in the form of relia bility parameters. These parameters are usually generated by researchers using field failure data. There are several databases that report the failure data of operating wind turbines. Researches use the failure data to generate the reliability parameters. However, in order to perform the analysis or use the results of the analysis, one must understand the underlying assumptions of the database along with information about the wind turbine population in the database such as their power rating, age, etc . In t his work, we analyze the relevant assumptions and discuss what information is required from a database in order to improve the reliability analysis.

This article is available online here and to CALCE Consortium Members for personal review.

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