PROACTIVE WIND TURBINE MAINTENANCE

Wind turbines are complex mechanical assets operating in challenging environmental locations. Proactively maintaining these high-value assets requires a well-planned and executed condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy. In today’s demanding operating environment where availability and power generation are critical, it is essential to implement best practices to optimize how we manage, maintain and operate our production assets.

Complex mechanical assets have a large number of potential failure modes, each with varying degrees of probability and consequence of failure. Considering that most failure modes do not have a time-based failure pattern, relying on a time-based maintenance strategy is not the most effective or efficient method of maintaining and optimizing production and costs for these assets. A typical time-based maintenance strategy is inconsistent, ineffective and overall more costly than a CBM strategy for wind turbine maintenance. An effective condition monitoring system (CMS) is a critical component of an optimized reliability focused CBM strategy. It is far more cost-effective to undertake maintenance activities in low wind periods, or when power generation demands are at their lowest. Successful plant asset optimization requires the strategic integration of proven technologies, maintenance best practices and reliability methodologies in a coordinated, sustainable program.