LUBRICANTS
PERFECT BALANCE?
In an environment where downtime for even one turbine can cost thousands, it is crucial that wind farm operators ensure they can rely on their equipment.
At the same time, across the industry there is a big drive towards reducing cost and making wind energy more profitable and competitive to conventional energy sources. Wind turbines are certainly becoming cheaper, and for some wind farm projects manufacturers are just breaking even on the turbine assets to gain the more profitable service business, which can last anything up to 20 years.
HOW TO IMPROVE TURBINE RELIABILITY WITHOUT IT COSTING THE EARTH
Some estimates are that the industry is cutting out up to 30 per cent of its operating costs through reducing downtime and improving efficiency of turbines in order to drive better profits, with the ultimate aim of becoming a mainstream, widely used power source.
While this is all good news, it means that there is more pressure than ever on wind farms to cut costs, without compromising output. It shouldn’t be the case that more reliable equipment costs more. In fact in this situation, cost and reliability of equipment go hand in hand. Wind turbines need to be performing as effectively as possible, and wind farm operators need to be confident they can rely on them in order to drive down costs across the board.
HOW TO ENSURE RELIABILITY The best way to achieve a balance between cost and reliability is to ensure turbines are running regularly, without pushing the equipment to produce every last possible energy output.
Imagine you have two cars next to each other at a set of traffic lights – one revs
his engine and speeds off as soon as the lights change, another drives away slowly but surely. It doesn’t take an engineer to work out which of these two car engines will last longer.
The same logic can be applied to wind turbines – while some wind farms will push a turbine to produce every last megawatt as quickly as possible, other operators will take a ‘slowly but surely’ approach. In the same way that both drivers at the traffic lights will probably arrive home at the same time, the turbines will produce similar amounts of power, but a more steady approach preserves the life of the turbine, which ultimately saves money.
AVOIDING WEAR AND TEAR
In line with this trend towards preserving turbine life to ensure costs are kept down and profits are increased, lubricant manufacturers are working hand in hand with the industry to extend the life of gear oils and bearing greases, so downtime caused by oil changes is kept to a minimum. The technology may be some way off, but ultimately why shouldn’t a gear oil last as long as the gears it lubricates?
One trend in the market at the moment has the potential to have a substantial impact on running costs. O&M Teams are moving away from fixed oil change intervals to ‘condition-based’ oil changes – essentially only changing the oil when necessary.
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www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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