PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE PREDICTING THE
John Coultate, Head of Condition Monitoring and EU Sales at Romax Technology states that Operations and Maintenance (O&M) is big business. According to industry research the market is expected to grow from $3bn in 2008 to $19bn by 2020, with China and the US leading the way, as well as significant growth anticipated across Europe.
MARKET SCALE
The scale of the market is further emphasised when you consider that up to around a quarter of the lifetime cost of wind energy goes on O&M. As a result of this, wind turbine owners, operators and managers are being placed under extreme pressure to collate and analyse performance data in order to reduce costs and improve ROI.
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MAINTENANCE PROBLEMS OF TOMORROW IS KEY TO THE FUTURE SUCCESS OF THE WIND INDUSTRY
REACTIVE APPROACH
When it comes to maintenance, reacting to problems after components have failed can be extremely costly. This reactive approach works fine when assets and replacements are inexpensive, easy to source and where the inevitable downtime does not have major cost or health and safety implications.
However, if this reactive approach is taken with major components in a wind turbine, such as for main bearings or gearboxes failures, these typically require expensive replacements involving crane mobilisation at short notice and lost production while the turbine is unavailable. This is especially damaging to the bottom line if failures occur during the high wind season.
ALTERNATIVE WORKING It is important to know that there are alternatives to working on a reactive basis. One option is to carry out preventative maintenance. This works on the basis that parts are periodically replaced within the turbine, regardless of whether it is failing, which can prove effective for small inexpensive components and consumables.
PREDICTIVE CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE
The other alternative is predictive condition- based maintenance. This technique proves highly effective with components where the condition can be monitored and a failing component can be detected sufficiently far in advance of a failure.
The lead time between detecting a fault and a component failing depends on many factors, but it must be sufficient to allow at least some of the following benefits to be realised…
• Secondary damage to other components may be prevented
• Necessary resources may be secured in advance at reduced cost
• Multiple maintenance activities can be carried out at once, thereby reducing the cost, e.g. with one crane mobilisation, multiple main bearings could be replaced
• Downtime can be minimised, thereby increasing production
• Downtime can be scheduled to occur at a low impact time, i.e. during the low wind season
• Cost effective life extension methods can be utilised to mitigate the damage, e.g. main bearing grease flushing
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