Several guidelines and standards from different industries provide lists of necessary data entries, as well as a range of taxonomies at varying degrees of granularity. However, none of these guidelines provide a complete scheme for reliability analyses of wind turbine components. This recommended practice presents an overview of appropriate standards and guidelines, suggesting taxonomies for categorizing component designations, measuring points, failure aspects, and maintenance tasks.

The Value of Data Collection Standards

»Reliability is a critical issue for the growing wind energy industry since it affects other areas like safety, availability, maintenance, logistics and cost. Increasing future demands on reliability and profitability of wind energy, especially offshore, require the optimization of wind turbine maintenance, for which appropriate data management and sophisticated decision-support tools are prerequisites. «, explains Berthold Hahn from Fraunhofer IWES in Kassel, Germany.

The development and adoption of reliability data collection standards and reporting across the industry will take the time and commitment of all stakeholders. The value, as realized in other industries such as oil and gas, lies in safer, more effective, and more efficient maintenance policies, strategies and practices. Failure to do this will restrict the pace at which improvement opportunities for operations and maintenance costs can be identified and implemented.

IEA Wind TCP Task 33

Recommended Practice 17 (May 2017) is the final result of IEA Wind TCP Task 33 focusing on reliability data. The author team consisted of experts from 11 countries with experience in data acquisition, reliability modeling, and data analysis from research and industry applications.