Project Summary

Project Goals

By completing these goals, our project could help wind farm developers by assisting them in making decisions when planning for risk, and when planning for maintenance. The project could also be useful for manufacturers to improve design of wind turbines based on past failures by knowing why they are failing. Additionally, the project could be useful for public interest. By providing an unbiased report of wind turbine failure, the project could help the public develop an understanding of actual failure rates. This will be important for public perception of wind turbines as they become more prevalent in the future.

Project Summary

To complete the first project goal — to assemble a database of wind turbine failures in the UK — we searched publicly available information, and we requested data from wind turbine developers and owners. We compiled a database taken from an online forum maintained by a number of wind farm owners between 2003 and 2007.

The original database included information about the owner, site name, individual turbine codes for each failure, the turbine failure rating, a description of the failed component, the date of the failure, the time the turbine was out of operation, the cost, and any additional comments on the failure.

From the British Wind Energy Association’s list of wind farms in operation, we found the coordinates of each wind farm location which was then used to find the site characteristics. From BWEA, we also recorded the installation date of the wind farms, and the hub heights and rotor diameters for the turbines therein.

From the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, we found the average wind speed at each of the wind farm locations. Using this information, we used the British Standard to find the extreme wind speed at each site.

From Neil Doherty, our contact at Sgurr Energy, we received power information that allowed us to calculate the capacity factor for each wind farm in our database.

To complete the second goal — to create a failure probability of key components — we had to determine the factors that could affect the failure rate of blades, gearboxes, and generators. To do this, we looked at the effect of: