At first glance, it would appear vital to stock critical wind turbine components to cover potential breakdowns and minimize downtime. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible, due to financial constraints or inadequate storage. But what if stockpiling components wasn’t as important as it appeared? Rather, careful maintenance planning and diagnostics may be the deciding factors for consistent uptime.

In recent years, drones have become much more present in our society. They are used for tasks such as homeland security, shooting videos, and plans are even in place for them to deliver packages. This trend is now coming into action in the wind energy sector.

When a lubrication system fails, it is usually due to a defective pump unit. Replacing this part is significantly cheaper than replacing the system itself. However, you need to get to the root cause of the defect to prevent it reoccurring. In this video, you will learn how to find the cause of an issue and fit a new pumping element.

When a failure occurs in a wind turbine, maintenance tasks can be costly and take time to complete. But what if there was a way to proactively assess costs, risks, opportunities, and benefits to positively impact the levelized cost of energy (LCOE)? Performance-based contracts for operation and maintenance could usher in a new era of reliability in wind energy.

Maintenance programs could be about to get an overhaul. Typically, operators would manage wind turbine performance and maintenance themselves or choose certain aspects to outsource to different providers. Performance-based service contracts may offer a preferable alternative. Raf Kerkofs from SKF is set to present on this topic at Wind O&M EU 2019.

Remanufacturing in wind energy is a relatively new phenomenon. When remanufacturing is mentioned in the sector, most would associate the process with bearings. But the remanufacturing trend is gathering speed and lubrication systems are the next component identified as an area where operators could significantly reduce costs.

Wind turbine functionality is highly reliant on fully operational bearings. However, these components undergo significant strain and deteriorate. Fully understanding failure modes in turbine bearings can be a challenge. But there are ways to reduce the likelihood of breakdowns.

Many operators order replacement parts on an item-by-item basis. This can be effective but does have limitations since the performance of the total system is not understood when considering items in an inventory individually. Innovative software may hold the key to fine tuning stock levels and expenses on spare parts and ensuring wind farms always have just what they need.

Planning maintenance and having the right inventory is often a challenge. Operators can end up with too much capital invested in stock or not enough to perform repairs in a timely manner. However, adopting best practices and the emergence of Logistics 4.0 present clear opportunities for cost reduction.