Recently a review of the U.S. wind energy industry was carried out and the Wind Energy Operations and Maintenance Report was published. A podcast on Wind Energy Update's head of research, Pamela Muckosy, interviewing Peter Asmus, the lead author of the report can be found here. The full report can be bought here.
I have not read the full report yet, but it looks like there is a good business case for PHM in wind energy, at least for gearboxes. Here are a few of the primary data findings quoted from the summary of this report:
79% of wind turbines are still under warranty. This is about to change.
O&M costs for wind power are double or triple the figures originally projected, they are particularly high in the U.S. – which is now the world's largest wind power market.
Europe has a 2% to 5% advantage over the U.S. if resource factors are accounted for.
There’s a -21% change in wind farm return on investment. This underperformance of wind assets is most likely attributable to both differences in power production and O&M costs over original estimates.
$0.027/kWh or €0.019/kWh is the average values of O&M costs obtained from report surveys. This compares to early estimates by one of the world’s dominant turbine suppliers of $0.005/kWh.
A significant amount of R&D is currently going into gearbox reliability. Many gearboxes, designed for a 20-year life, are failing after 6 to 8 years of operation.
Data suggests that O&M challenges for wind turbines peaked in 2007/2008.
At 2 cents/kWh, O&M costs are roughly equal to the federal production tax credit offered in the U.S. as a subsidy to make wind energy competitive.
