For a new turbine, O&M costs may easily make up 20-25 per cent of the total levelised cost per kWh produced over the lifetime of the turbine. If the turbine is fairly new, the share may only be 10-15 per cent, but this may increase to at least 20-35 per cent by the end of the turbine’s lifetime. As a result, O&M costs are attracting greater attention, as manufacturers attempt to lower these costs significantly by developing new turbine designs that require fewer regular service visits and less turbine downtime.

Operation and maintenance costs include the following:

• Insurance;
• Regular maintenance (scheduled maintenance and unscheduled maintenance)
• Repair;
• Spare parts
• Administration.

Some of these cost components can be estimated relatively easily. Two components of the cost of operation and maintenance (O&M) of wind turbines are vitally important and need to be minimised: those for scheduled maintenance and for unscheduled maintenance. If component failures lead to unscheduled stoppages, then the additional cost of loss of electricity sales is introduced. That is why considerable efforts are being made to control and forecast such failures.

An essential tool when planning maintenance strategies is information about the probabilities of component failures. The consequences and costs of dealing with component failures, particularly in offshore wind farms, are critical, as it takes time to arrange for repair vessels to visit the site and deal with the faults. Failure of a critical component, such as a gearbox, can cause damage to other components and so it is important to obtain advance warning of possible problems. Equally important is information on the turbine downtime, or outage, associated with the failures of particular components, as this is a crucial bearing on the lost revenue.

That is also the reason that AITECH provides Wind turbines Inspection services. With the aim of providing customers with accurate information on failure of wind turbine components by optimized techniques to reduce maintenance costs and minimize wind turbine downtime.