POWER August 2015 - 53

WIND POWER
decreasing financial risk and uncertainty;
and understanding reliability trends across
turbine models (and components), geographical
locations, and age.
Buying Blindly
Such a benchmark would be useful to end
users of turbine equipment, many of whom
say there is a dearth of failure/reliability data.
" While trends show that [independent power
producers] and utilities are developing their
own projections of equipment failures, those
analyses are in the early stages of development, "
Michelle Arenson, director of wind
energy development at Alliant Energy told
POWER in June.
Meanwhile, OEMs continue to hold failure
data as proprietary, which means there
is a lack of transparency between user and
OEM, she noted. Other factors that make
quality issues difficult to understand include
the lack of material certification,
material origin, poor serial numbers, and a
lack of lot tracking.
The relatively recent spotlight on quality
management will only become more intense,
Arenson predicted. She noted that the majority
of turbines built in the U.S. were installed
in the 2007 to 2009 time period, and that
many of those turbines are coming off the
original warranty periods, " so owners may
be more in tune with failures than they were
when the OEM had responsibility for major
component failures. "
What OEMs Are Doing
So what are OEMs doing to improve performance?
Although POWER contacted a number
of major OEMs with this question, only
one turbine maker responded.
" Over the past year we have seen an
increased focus on quality in every area
of the Wind Power Division, " said Klaus
Hauschulte, who heads the Quality Management
and Environmental Protection, Health
Management and Safety arm for Siemens'
Wind Power and Renewable Division. " We
collect key performance indicators (KPIs)
monthly in all areas, including suppliers'
performance. The improvement we achieved
with this is that we now have transparent reports
on different levels. This helps to create
awareness of quality. "
Experts recommend that it would be more
prudent for turbine users to do their own research
before the purchase of a major component.
That may not always be practical, as
wind typically represents a small percentage
of most generating companies' portfolios,
and those companies do not have the long
history of experience with the technology
nor the industry contacts that could help in
that effort.
August 2015 | POWER
www.powermag.com
For an example of what this might entail,
one of the most effective ways of preventing
a gearbox failure is to ensure that
the design of the gearbox is appropriate
for its usage environment. According to
Bob Errichello, owner of gear consulting
company GEARTECH and the primary
author of the blog gearboxfailure.com,
the procurement specification should include
interface requirements, lubrication
requirements, gearbox load information,
minimum gear and bearing design margin,
required calculation methodologies for
gear and bearing life, material cleanliness,
gear accuracy, required system life and reliability,
minimum and maximum operating
temperature, allowable maintenance
intervals, acoustic noise requirements,
and other such information.
ANSI/AGMA/AWEA 6006-A03 provides
guidelines for design and specification
of gearboxes for wind turbines that
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POWER August 2015

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