POWER August 2015 - 52

WIND POWER
The Wind Sector's Elusive Quest
for Quality
Despite wind power's going " mainstream, " original equipment manufacturers
and end users struggle to pin down quality standards for ever-evolving
wind turbine component technologies.
Sonal Patel
A
s more utilities embrace wind power,
the U.S. wind turbine market has expanded
tremendously over the years.
It has proliferated into numerous facilities
that specialize in the roughly 8,000 component
parts that make up utility-scale wind
turbines, including blades, rotors, generators,
and other parts located inside the nacelle.
To drive the domestic wind industry's
growth, turbine makers have sought to scale
up turbines to multi-megawatt power ratings,
while also increasing cost-effectiveness. A
telling statistic from the Department of Energy's
(DOE's) National Renewable Energy
Laboratory is that since 1999, the average
turbine generating capacity has increased by
170%, to 1.94 MW. This has been achieved
by advancements in composite materials,
automation, and more efficient manufacturing
processes.
Perhaps as important to the sector's future
is turbine reliability. Unplanned maintenance
and component failure are concerns to both
wind farm owners-because they directly
affect revenue streams-and original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) (Figure 1), who
often have to cover the costs of warrantied
maintenance work.
As the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
notes, a wind turbine is a significant
investment. The lab reported in 2011 that
turbine transaction price quotes can range
from as low as $900/kW to as high as $1,400/
kW-meaning an average 2-MW turbine
could cost between $1.8 million and $2.8
million, plus installation costs. Observed and
projected potential failures of components
of the gearboxes, generators, or blades alone
could contribute about 3% to a wind project's
cost of energy. That's a significant amount
when you consider that a project's civil work
construction contributes an estimated 13%.
The Quality Question
From some perspectives, turbine qual52
ity
concerns can be traced back to a lack
of long-term renewable energy policies
in the U.S. These have created an uncertain
environment for turbine fabrication,
prompting fluctuating volumes that lead
to boom-and-bust planning scenarios
and that do not support efficient, qualityingrained
manufacturing environments.
Ramps in production sometimes mean hiring
employees with limited experience in
manufacturing components.
At the same time, because wind power's
rapid installation increases have spurred an
accelerated evolution, some technologies,
like those affecting blade materials, have
changed quickly over the past few years.
Some equipment currently in operation can
easily be considered in the " infancy " category,
say some stakeholders. The increased
use of carbon in new blade designs, for example,
makes certain processes complex,
like inspection.
Other experts point out that the stochastic
nature of wind power production contributes
to challenges in standardizing reliability
enhancements and reducing maintenance
costs. That is, particular turbine models
have different issues based on geography
and operations.
Among several initiatives to address this
challenge is the DOE's Sandia National
Laboratories' Blade Reliability Collaborative,
and its Continuous Reliability Enhancements
for Wind (CREW) database and
analysis program, which serves to characterize
wind turbine and wind plant reliability
performance issues by collecting data from
thousands of wind turbines nationwide.
CREW also provides a public benchmark
that allows wind power generation owners
and turbine makers to self-assess their performance
against their peers.
Yet, during 2013, when CREW team
members performed an internal reassessment
of their effort to identify the
www.powermag.com
benchmark's value, any data gaps, and opportunities
to be better aligned with the
wind industry, they found that wind plant
owners and operators have been developing
in-house reliability-data collection tools
with similar goals to the CREW project.
It said in a September 2014 statement announcing
this finding that the lab strongly
supported a national reliability benchmark
to assist the CREW team in their objectives
of maximizing power performance yield;
1. Market share for wind turbine
manufacturers of the U.S. wind
power fleet in 2014. The first number
is MW. " Others " includes AAER, Alstom,
CCWE, DeWind, Elecon, EWT, Fuhrlander,
Goldwind, Guodian, Hyundai, HZ Windpower,
Kenersys, Leitner-Poma, Nordic, Northern
Power Systems, PowerWind, Samsung, Sany,
Sinovel, Unison, VENSYS, and more. Source:
AWEA U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report
Year Ending 2014
■ GE Energy, Enron, Zond, Tacke ■ Vestas, NEG Micon,
Micon, Nordtank, NedWind, Wind World ■ Siemens,
Bonus ■ Gamesa ■ Mitsubishi ■ Suzlon ■ Clipper
■ Senvion ■ Acciona ■ Nordex ■ Others
2,684
4%
1,700
3%
3,899
6%
3,942
6%
9,837
15%
11,916
18%
27,952
42%
1,259
2% 908
1%
763
1%
1,019
2%
POWER | August 2015
http://www.powermag.com
POWER August 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER August 2015
