Determining an Appropriate Condition-based Maintenance Strategy for Wind Turbines

Maintenance is fundamental to effective management of wind farms due to its impact on productivity of wind turbines, operational costs and hence revenue generation. Essentially, there are two common maintenance strategies applied to wind turbines; Time-Based Maintenance (TBM) which involves carrying out tasks at predetermined regular-intervals and Failure-Based Maintenance (FBM) which involves using a wind turbine until it fails. However, the impact of failure consequences on revenue generation and electricity network limit the adequacy of these strategies to support the current commercial drivers of the wind industry. Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) is a technique mostly used to select suitable maintenance strategies for physical assets. In this paper, the approach of RCM is applied to Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines to identify possible failure modes, causes and the resultant effects on system operation. Failure consequences of critical components are evaluated and expressed in financial terms. Suitable Conditioned Based Maintenance (CBM) activities are identified and assessed over the life-cycle of wind turbines using Asset Life-Cycle Analysis technique to maximise return on investment in wind farms.