In wind turbine operations, it’s often the small things that can quickly add up.
In the case of our customer Eolus, identifying a 44kW power deration ended up leading to a deeper understanding of a troublesome valve issue.
“Through our i4SEE reports, Eolus could see that the long-term reference curve had a small change in rated power. The derate from 3600kW to 3556kW turned out to be caused by faulty temperature control valves in the generator/converter cooling system.
We alerted the service provider who had not picked up on the issue. The problem had occurred the first time in February 2021 and was not fixed until January 2022 after prolonged troubleshooting by the service provider who struggled to locate the issue.
Since the service period for that wind farm is Aug-Aug and the lost production was not represented in the contractual availability guarantee, we made a loss of energy claim, with the help of i4SEE for the calculation. We received compensation from the service provider from Feb 2021 to Aug 2021. The availability from Aug 2021 to Jan 2022 was adjusted by the service provider after they had solved the problem.”
If there is one thing that is underestimated in the industry today, it’s how these kinds of small problems can draw unnecessary time and resources from day-to-day operations.
