Wind power – Vattenfall wind assets

Onshore capacity: 542 MW

Offshore capacity: 836 MW
Production: 4.080 TWh

Onshore: 119 MW
Onshore: 41 MW Offshore: 130 MW
Offshore: 540 MW
Estimated annual
Estimated annual production:
production: 1888 GWh 727 GWh

Onshore: 150 MW Onshore: 215 MW

Offshore: 54 MW Offshore: 96 MW

Estimated annual Estimated annual

production: 470 GWh production: 900 GWh

Onshore: 12 MW
Offshore: 16 MW

Estimated annual
production: 84 GWh

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Agenda
• Take Control of your Turbines
• Pink Elephant – Drive Train
• LCC

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Take Control of Turbines => LCC

• Owner has to take control over turbine:

Collect O&M reports systematically
- RDS-PP
- Typical failure
Extract MTBF and work hours and spare parts
Perform LCC Analysis
• Structured O&M data must for take over of service after
warranty
• LCC for modelling Price of service and Insurance Cover
• Evaluate future turbine supply based on LCC

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Take Control cont.

• All SCADA and service reports has to be managed by

the owner from day one
• Scada data needs to be connected to work orders
– Keep record of lost revenue from production
• Long development process of having systems in place
– And/or keep good record of spare parts used
• Takes effort to get reporting with Quality
– Keep it simple
• Failure Analysis Second profit of from operation,
avoiding future costs

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Drive Train Problems?

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Background

• Site 1, >10 pc, 1,5 MW

• Site 2, >100 pc, 2 MW
• Site 3, >50 pc, 3 MW
• Size 1,5 to 3 MW
• Problems starts 6 months to 18
months
• Result high O&M cost and high
guarantee risk for manufacturers

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 This is the Challenge

• Gearboxes don’t survive 20

years
• Failures cost money
• Suppliers responsible for
solving the problem
• Nearly all offshore wind
parks have serial faults on
drive train within 5 years
• 10 years for turbine to
mature from prototype

• Can we try to solve this

problem together?

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Site 1

• Changing filter full of metal particles, <1 year

• Changing bearings high speed shaft
• Changing individual gearboxes, 1- 2 years
• Changing all gearboxes, 2-3 years
• Continuing changing gearboxes 4-5 generation
• Today 10 years later we have high availability
• Offshore test with limited risk, Ok to gain offshore experience
• Possible to buy improved gearbox today

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Site 2

• All turbines taken down after one year and modified

• Gearboxes continue to fail, MTBF 5 years
• All gearboxes replaced within 2012, still continues to fail, quality
problem
• Testing or maturing turbines in serial scale “offshore” too cost full,
real cost only known to manufacturer.
• Operator have to pay for high O&M cost from end of warranty to
year 20, high risk on investment

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Site 3

• Problems after in average

10mio. kWh
• Complete breakdown,
planet bearings
• Continuous improvement
and change of gearboxes
• Guarantee and premium
price for electricity,
makes it profitable
• Today situation stable
• New problem main
bearing

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Why?

• Complex problem
• Many causes
• No answer up to now……
• No one is hiding the answer in secret!
• But are we taking Quality Issues serious?

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Where Historically?
• Planetary bearings – leads to complete gearbox replacement
– failed stochastically but seems to be solved today
• High speed shaft bearings – can be replaced in situ
– fail more load cycle dependent
– Is it possible to solve this problem for the existing fleet?

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Many causes historically

• Bad quality of gearbox assembly

• Bad bearing configurations
• Lack of oil cleanliness
• Design based on static conditions and uni-directional load
direction solely based on aerodynamic simulations
• Internal dynamics
• To low loading, skidding
• Models not validated by measurements
• Industry focus on capacity and not technical quality
• Takes time to change into a professional culture

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Bad quality
• Quality control was not sufficient in the late 1990’s
• Bad material for gears
• Dirty housings and components
• Dirty assembly areas
• Higher volumes, new suppliers, lack of skilled persons and materiel
shortage

This is partly solved today

– Problems are not made by mistake
– Today Buyers market with pressed prices?
– “75-90 % of all failures caused by quality problems
• Manufacturing, materiel, forging, casting, grinding…material
impurities, heat treatment, surface treatment
– Owners need to check quality during manufacturing

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Oil and filter

• Particles in the oil

• Water in the oil
• Oil circulation ratio too high
• Not enough filtration of oil
• Additives
• Foam building
• Corrosion and free hydrogen/Hy. embrittlement
• Offline filtration, 16/14/11 not standard for all suppliers
• Oil analyses
• Lubrication and Cooling
• Oil exchange with dirty new oil and bad handling
• Need for Cultural Revolution if gearboxes should survive 20
years, oil film 0,3 to 1 um

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Scaling problems >1 MW to 2-3 MW +5 MW
Historical
• Larger turbines >1 MW out of validation range
• None linear conditions
• Price competition, 2003-05
• Hybrid design, main bearing integrated into gearbox
Today
• Jump to +5 MW with +150 m rotor
– Increase bending moment and torque
– Drive trains not scalable
– How to “Grow Safe”
• Simplified wind field in IEC 61400-1
– Flat terrain 60 meter
– Hub heights >100 m and blades >50 m

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Certified Turbines

• 3 stage GBX with 3 point suspension

– complex drive train from mech. system dynamics
• Big lack of system knowledge
• Simplified turbine model
– GBX, box with a torsional spring / first order system
– Turbine IEC certified but gearbox fail
– Rotor will not fall off but no guarantee for economical life time

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Skidding
Historically
• 4-6 m/s wind speed to low contact pressure
– between bearing rollers and race way
– rollers do not rotate but slide (skidding)
• Skidding dependent on load
• Oil film removed when the bearing skid
• Minimum loads as a function of speed variations, T(dω/dt), not
investigated enough

VF Testbench results
• New bearing configuration with constant skidding
• Can we allow constant skidding? What level?
– Excessive wear of bearings HSS

• Can we design bearings that handle acceleration of rollers?

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Internal Dynamics

• Gearbox 30 parts that are moving with a dynamic behaviour

• Problems with insufficient stiffness of housing and planetarians
• Torsional oscillations
• Many models but how to verify by measurement

A lot work is done by several actors.

• NREL Gearbox Collaborative, final report
• Manufacturers and Research institutes build test rigs

• Computers might be fast and large but still not able to simulate what
is going on in the gearbox and turbine manufacturers might not
have the knowledge of the indata to the model and measurements
for validation difficult.

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Historically Capacity Focus

• Turbine manufacturers focused on producing more and more

turbines
– Everything sold out
• Project developers interested in new models with better energy
yields
• Previous End User, Farmers and Dentists, with little knowledge
• Large Utilities entered late
• Periods of sellers market, turbines sold with known problems
• Products produced to survive warranty period
• Large fleet of turbines with problems on the market
• Little interest to listen to knowledgeable End User with LCA focus

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Today Excessive Capacity

• Lack of quality of components like bearings and gear shafts

• Pressure to reduce price
• Buyers market, can we choose preferred supplier of drive line?
• New manufacturers
– With very limited system knowledge
– Dependent on consultancy companies for the design
– How to make this into a safe adventure?
• Some knowledgeble operators
– how to influence turbine manufacturers

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Bermuda Triangle

• Turbine manufacturer,
Gearbox manufacturer and
Sub supplier seems not to
cooperate enough and share
information to each other due
to claims
• How to solve problems when
no one have full information
• Need to cooperate, share
information and solve problem
together
• Turbine owners contribution
– Partner with access to
Real life test rigs
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How can we solve it?
• Measure loads in operation, include transients
– Critical sites, turbulence and wake effects
• Validate/calibrate models by measurements in test benches and in
operation
• Engineer and design new gearboxes

• Life time test, HALT

• Never put a prototype wind farm in the sea again
• Improve quality systems for manufacturing
• Rapid actions when unexpected failures happens
– Root Cause Analysis after first failures
– Counter measures and temporarily solutions
– Repair before the whole fleet destroyed

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Elephants belong to Serrengetti!

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And not in the drive train

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Background LCC

The basis for the LCC model is the ECN O&M tool implemented in Excel
• Model forecasting yearly O&M costs
• Certified by Germanischer Lloyd

Vattenfall bought a license in 2007

• First case study for Horns Rev (Baudish, 2007-2008)
• Multiple scenario analysis for comparison of wind farms, wind turbines,
vessels and accommodation (Baudish, 2010)
• Extended to life cycle cost and profit analysis, and updated case study
Horns Rev (Stalin, Besnard, 2010)
• Further projects Dan Tysk, EAOW……
The LCC model was developed in parallel with the data collection and
analysis for Horns Rev from work orders, SCADA data and interviews
Model ↔ Case study

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Overview LCC Model

The model focuses especially on the O&M phase:

• Simple investment model
• Simple energy yield model (based on capacity factor + availability)
• Electricity scenarios

• O&M cost structure:

• Corrective maintenance Direct costs: Staff, material,
• Service/Preventive maintenance vessel/equipment
• Retrofits
• Catastrophic/serial failures Indirect costs: Revenue losses
• Fixed costs (administration, transportation, logistic, O&M facilities,
insurance, maintenance contracts…)
• Insurance/Warranty/Maintenance contracts cover part of the costs

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Model - Input Data (1)
Corrective maintenance:
• Frequency maintenance events (repair, replacement, preparation)
• Maintenance procedure for each event:
– Spare part logistic time
– Vessels and equipment, and duration of use during repair
– Number of technicians
– Repair times
– Option for splitting activity
• Cost for the material and spare part
• Option detection by CMS (i.e. grouping activities)
• Seasonal distribution (i.e. planning with CMS information)
• Applicable retrofit
• Applicable Warranty/Insurance (spare part, vessels, production losses)
Data structured according to RDS-PP, VGB, 2007

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Model - Input Data (2)
Vessel characteristics and costs:
• Weather constraints (wind and waves)
• Logistic and travelling times
• MOB/DEMOB costs and daily rate
• Use for clustering
The accessibility is modeled as a waiting time depending on the weather
constraints and calculated based on wind and wave statistics

Preventive maintenance activities:

• Seasonal distribution
• Duration
• Cost, staff, equipment

General wind farm data (capacity factors/seasons, staff costs and working
hours, number of wind turbines), overhead costs

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Model - Input Data (3)

• Examples of some input

data for corrective and
preventive maintenance

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Model - Input Data (4)

The life cycle cost scenario:

• Investment costs (development, installation, WTs, foundations, grid),
decommissioning costs, WF lifetime
• Real discount rate
• Electricity price scenarios
• Failure distribution for each corrective maintenance activity:
– Constant failure rate (cf. “failure description”)
– Continuous improvement
+ Retrofits
– Renewal process with Weibull distribution
– Alternative for flexibility: Defined for each year
• Service/preventive maintenance activities performed yearly or specific year
• Service and corrective maintenance, contracted availability during warranty
• Possibility to use historical costs (overwrite calculated costs)

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Case Study

• 80 V80-2MW at Horns Rev in operation since 2002

• Located around 15km off the coast in Denmark
• Scope: Wind turbines and internal grid until circuit breakers on platform
• Connection to grid owned and operated by Energinet.dk

• Sources of data:
– Wind and Significant Wave Height: Met mast and buoy 2002-2007 + Correction
– Failure rates: Work orders from 2009/10 (age 8 years) + Transformers and
Gearbox
– Maintenance procedures: Interviews (Expert knowledge)
– Component costs: Data from spare part management
– Vessels characteristics and costs: Data from maintenance manager
– Overheads costs: Data from maintenance manager
• Some data are assumptions of what could happened during the remaining
lifetime (especially for grid connection, alternative Cired studies)

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Reliability Results

• Calculated downtime per

sub-system
• Checked general validity
with availability results

• Main contributors:
1) Gear + Auxiliary
systems drive train
2) Generator
3) Power electronics
4) Control system

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O&M Costs Results

• O&M cost contributors:

– Corrective maintenance
– Revenue losses
– Transfer vessels
– Preventive maintenance

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LCC Not Easy but usable

• Missing indata
– Work order reporting system not structured or developed
– Quality of reported data
– Some data not reported
• Register Spare parts consumed to each work order
• You will have to improve your O&M management system

LCC is Useful

• Plan logistics for new offshore wind farms

• Choose turbines based on database of failure frequency
• Calculate service cost

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Thanks!