Wind turbine lifetime extension decision-making based on structural health monitoring

Rubert, Tim; Zorzi, Giorgio; Fusiek, Grzegorz; Niewczas, Paweł; McMillan, David; Perry, Marcus

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2019.05.034

Cited by 23 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Large numbers of moving parts combined with enormous torque forces can result in bearing failure caused by bending fatigue or plastic deformation. The Capex for a new gearbox and its replacement is assumed to be £110,760-184,600/WTG [57], which translated to an average of around €193/kW. We assume an initial figure of €128.7/kW, which is consistent with the figure of €135.29/kW obtained in a personal interview.…”

Section: Life-extension Options: Reblading Gearbox and Electronic Control Unit Retrofittingmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…The range of Capex for reblading shown in the literature is quite wide, possibly due to the different blade lengths assumed (30-80 m) or to differences in aerodynamic profile design. The figures found in the literature include €129/kW [16] and £178,920 per wind turbine [57] (which works out to €233/kW at the exchange rate on August 2020 of 0.9008) and $200,000 [58]. A reasonable average value would be €110-140 K/WTG (personal interview).…”

Section: Life-extension Options: Reblading Gearbox and Electronic Control Unit Retrofittingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Old Wind Farm Life Extension vs. Full Repowering: A Review of Economic Issues and a Stochastic Application for Spain

Abadie

Goicoechea

2021

Energies

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The installation of wind power technology is growing steadily and the trend can be expected to continue if the objectives proposed by the European Commission are to be achieved. In some countries a considerable percentage of installed wind power capacity is near the end of its useful lifetime. In the case of Spain, the figure is 50% within five years. Over the last 20 years, wind energy technology has evolved considerably and the expected capacity factor has improved, thus increasing annual energy production, and capital expenditure and operational expenditure have decreased substantially. This paper studies the optimal decision under uncertainty between life extension and full repowering for a generic wind farm installed in the Iberian Peninsula when the future hourly electricity prices and the capacity factor evolve stochastically and seasonally. The results show that in economic terms, full repowering is the best option, with a net present value of €702,093 per MW installed, while reblading is the second best option. The methodology can be transferred to other specific wind farms in different electricity markets and can be used to develop national wind energy policy recommendations to achieve projected shares in the electricity mix.

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Section: Life-extension Options: Reblading Gearbox and Electronic Control Unit Retrofittingmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Life-extension Options: Reblading Gearbox and Electronic Control Unit Retrofittingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Old Wind Farm Life Extension vs. Full Repowering: A Review of Economic Issues and a Stochastic Application for Spain

Abadie

Goicoechea

2021

Energies

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“…For a wind farm with a large number of turbines in the field, in order to improve the evaluation efficiency, clusters can be divided according to a unified standard (according to the turbine spacing, terrain characteristics, wake influence area, etc. ), and the typical characteristics of the turbines in the cluster can be analyzed [9] . During the operation data analysis, the transient events related to load are also concerned.…”

Section: Historical Operation Data Analysis and Condition Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Site-specific assessment of wind turbine residual life and health status

Guo¹,

Li²,

Hui³

et al. 2021

E3S Web Conf.

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At present, some 600kW and 750kW wind turbines put into operation earlier in China have exceeded their 20-year design life. For these turbines, the safety, reliability and economy of these turbines are usually evaluated in a reasonable way, so as to formulate life extension or decommissioning strategies to maximize economic benefits. Referring to the current international standards and guidelines, this paper takes a wind farm in South China as an example to evaluate the remaining life and state of the turbines. The external environment data of the met mast is extrapolated to the turbine site, and the load simulation is carried out based on the wind turbine model. The fatigue load set of the turbines under the design load condition and the site-specific load condition is obtained. The possible fatigue damage in the historical operation period is calculated. Combined with the linear damage accumulation theory of Miner, the fatigue of each turbine in the site is obtained by load analogy. The final P90 life is obtained by analyzing the uncertainty factors introduced in the assessment of residual life and health status.

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“…Ziegler et al [24] investigated the effect of increasing maintenance costs on the feasibility of life extension compared to repowering. Rubert et al [25] proposed to do the turbinespecific economic evaluation based on strain measurements, accounting for the differences in AEP between turbines. Other options include exploiting inspection data for remaining useful life assessment [26] and for reliability updating [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic and Risk-Informed Life Extension Assessment of Wind Turbine Structural Components

2021

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Reassessment of the fatigue life for wind turbine structural components is typically performed using deterministic methods with the same partial safety factors as used for the original design. However, in relation to life extension, the conditions are generally different from the assumptions used for calibration of partial safety factors; and using a deterministic assessment method with these partial safety factors might not lead to optimal decisions. In this paper, the deterministic assessment method is compared to probabilistic and risk-based approaches, and the economic feasibility is assessed for a case wind farm. Using the models also used for calibration of partial safety factors in IEC61400-1 ed. 4, it is found that the probabilistic assessment generally leads to longer additional fatigue life than the deterministic assessment method. The longer duration of the extended life can make life extension feasible in more situations. The risk-based model is applied to include the risk of failure directly in the economic feasibility assessment and it is found that the reliability can be much lower than the target for new turbines, without compromising the economic feasibility.

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Wind turbine lifetime extension decision-making based on structural health monitoring

Cited by 23 publications

References 25 publications

Old Wind Farm Life Extension vs. Full Repowering: A Review of Economic Issues and a Stochastic Application for Spain

Old Wind Farm Life Extension vs. Full Repowering: A Review of Economic Issues and a Stochastic Application for Spain

Site-specific assessment of wind turbine residual life and health status

Probabilistic and Risk-Informed Life Extension Assessment of Wind Turbine Structural Components

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