Downtime analysis for improved decision-making

Hawker, Graeme and Douglas, Neil and Hall, Stuart (2007) Downtime analysis for improved decision-making. In: European Wind Energy Conference & Exhibition 2007, 2007-05-07 - 2007-05-10. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Modern turbine SCADA systems will report the events which take place in a turbine when a failure occurs, but will rarely be capable of performing a root-cause analysis of failures, or to put these failures into the financial context of a wind farm's operation. This results in uninformed decision-making by wind farm operators, with a perceived lack of control in the day-to-day maintenance of a wind farm. The creation of a Downtime Analysis tool allows all events of turbine non-production to be allocated, from raw SCADA data, into user-specified categories of failures and causes. This categorisation is independent of the turbine model and SCADA system in use, and allows comparison across a portfolio as well as within a site. Once a root-cause analysis of downtime events has been conducted, pattern-matching algorithms can be used to identify similar events and patterns of serial faults. Interpolation from anemometry and other turbines allows a cost analysis which indicates to the wind farm manager the relative financial importance of different downtime events. The categorisation of downtime also permits the accurate measurement of availability according to different definitions, as well as the calculation of Liquidated Damages according to contract.

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