Operations management in the repowering of wind turbines
Repowering operations management: once your new wind turbines are built, measurements, inspections and monitoring secure yield and availability.
With repowering, you modernise a wind farm: older turbines are replaced by modern wind turbines with greater capacity. For this investment to pay off, operation must also work. Operations management begins with commissioning and accompanies the wind farm over its entire lifetime. It covers technical and commercial tasks and ensures that the farm delivers the expected performance, conditions are complied with and decisions are based on reliable data.
The technical operations management of a wind farm usually includes continuous monitoring of the turbines, assessment of fault messages, coordination of maintenance and repairs, and monitoring of inspection dates. Added to this are reports that compare expected and actual yields and make availability traceable. Commercial operations management takes care of billing, contracts and budgets. In the first years of operation, when contractual warranty and guarantee claims against the manufacturers often still exist, clean documentation of faults and downtimes is particularly important, because it forms the basis for later claims. The yield side is part of it too. Anyone who regularly evaluates generation, availability and wind conditions detects deviations from the yield forecast early and can narrow down causes, such as downtimes, curtailment or a changed power curve. Wind farms are usually monitored remotely around the clock, and faults are handled according to defined procedures. On site, this includes visual inspections, switching operations in the internal farm grid and coordination of mandatory inspections. Insurers, direct marketers and grid operators need a central contact person who keeps operating data and evidence ready.
Operations management after repowering has its own particularities. The new wind turbines have larger rotors and taller towers than the existing ones, existing access roads, cable routes and grid connections are often reused, and the conditions from the permit decision apply to the new operation. These often include evidence on noise and nature conservation that can only be provided during ongoing operation. Early coordination between planning, construction and operations management prevents such obligations from coming to light only after commissioning. For continued operation beyond the intended design or operating life, often around 20 years, it must be checked which technical assessments and evidence are required under the applicable rules. A complete operating history makes this assessment easier.
In wind farm operation, we offer, among other things, power curve and performance measurement, partial discharge measurement, sound emission measurement and frequency analysis and biological and ecological monitoring. The power curve shows whether the turbines deliver what the review report on wind potential and yield leads you to expect. How nature conservation tasks accompany a repowering in all phases is described under ecological services in repowering. How we support your repowering project through to commissioning is described in implementation with project financing, detailed design and construction management. We are happy to discuss in person which operations management tasks you can have us take over in repowering.
