Tales of Wind #1 - Pirate derating on Wind turbine & contract negotiation with O&M

A pirate power derating was spotted through Greensolver’s monitoring software and analysis on a 2MW wind turbine. The turbine was derated because of a high temperature on one of the Gearbox bearing.

Greensolver team has handled the correction by sharing the result of their analysis to the O&M contractor and requested a deeper investigation.

Following the investigation, the responsibility of the induced lost production was assigned to the O&M contractor:

✓ Step 1: identification of the underperformance of the wind turbine. Data analysis to link the underperformance to an active Warning on the SCADA

✓ Step 2: communication with the O&M contractor to obtain further analysis and site intervention. It was found the heat exchanger were not cleaned well enough during maintenance. Thorough cleaning was performed accordingly.

✓ Step 3: Greensolver assessed the lost production induced by those deratings and applied a clause from the O&M contract stating the financial
responsibility was assigned to the O&M contractor. The overall lost prod corresponded to 50k€.

Greensolver suggested to the wind farm owner not to retrieve the 50k€ from the O&M contractor directly but rather convert them as a software upgrade that would increase the performance of the wind farm. This software upgrade was then applied to the machine and lead to an validated increase of AEP of 1,2%.

Written by Technical and Financial Asset Management Team