The use of wind energy to produce electricity has long been a hotly debated issue in the climate change debate. But at the moment, wind farms are unable to offer this reliability. In fact, the combined output of wind farms can be assumed to have almost zero reliability on the scale of most nations. By increasing wind energy reliability, the cost of wind energy can be decreased. Discover the reasons why wind energy is not very dependable by reading this article.
Wind Energy Drivetrain Reliability
Premature failures of gearboxes, generators, pitch, and main bearings, as well as other drivetrain parts, have a significant impact on the cost of operating and maintaining wind power plants.
The Drivetrain Reliability Collaborative is headed by NREL, which also collaborates with other researchers, academic institutions, and consultants, as well as drivetrain, component, and wind energy manufacturers, as well as wind plant owners and operators, independent service providers, and suppliers of analytics software.
Using a multifaceted strategy, the project combines analysis, modeling, field failure statistics, dynamometer and field characterization, and operations and maintenance research to improve drivetrain reliability and turbine availability while lowering operational and maintenance costs and the Levelized cost of wind energy.
Wind Energy Blade Reliability
Despite how infrequent they are, wind energy blade failures can have disastrous consequences.
To validate wind blade and wind energy designs, blade manufacturers demand tests of blade properties, static mechanical tests, and fatigue tests.
In addition to performing small- to large-scale subcomponent tests, the National Wind Technology Center facilities have a wide range of capabilities for full-scale blade validation.
Wind Energy Operating And Maintenance Costs
The cost of wind power has come under increased scrutiny, particularly operating and maintenance (O&M) costs, which cover routine maintenance as well as unscheduled maintenance brought on by unanticipated failures of wind energy parts.
Over the assumed 20-year lifespan of the turbine, cumulative O&M costs of wind energy can equal 65%-95% of the investment cost of a turbine.
Unscheduled maintenance costs are difficult to quantify across the industry, but some studies indicate that they represent 30% to 60% of total O&M costs and that they typically rise over time as wind energy gets older.
In the wind energy sector, unplanned maintenance as a result of failures is particularly problematic. In the wind energy sector, the cost of energy is frequently expressed in dollars per kilowatt-hour, with the ratio of the annual cost of energy production to the annual energy output.
The price per kilowatt-hour for operating wind energy increases when an unexpected component failure increases the cost of operating the turbine and reduces its energy output.
The cost and downtime of unscheduled maintenance are typically increased by a number of aspects specific to wind energy. It can be challenging to reach wind energy because they are frequently located in outlying areas.
Furthermore, the largest turbine systems are frequently situated at altitudes of up to 65 to 80 meters. Crews must either climb the tower and work in windy conditions at those elevations, or special cranes must be transported to the remote location to enable parts to be taken out and replaced from the turbine.
Wind Farms Should Be Viewed As Fuel Savers
As a direct result, wind farms cannot completely replace fossil fuel or nuclear power plants. If we construct wind farms, we must be aware that when they produce almost no electricity, conventional power plants will need to be ready to increase their output.
Hopefully, this will change in the future with advancements in energy storage technology or with the construction of super-grids that span entire continents, but for the time being, this situation is likely to persist.
Because of this, wind farms ought to be considered “fuel savers.” Because fossil fuel power plants must be shut down when electricity is produced, this reduces fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
In other words, they replace fossil fuel power plants’ ability to generate electricity but not the power plants themselves, which will largely still be required during non-windy periods.
Of course, this does not imply that we shouldn’t construct wind farms. The advantages of wind farms’ reduced carbon dioxide emissions are plain to see.
Similarly, one of the most affordable methods of producing low-carbon energy is through wind farms.
However, it is important to recognize the role that wind farms will play in the future of the energy sector. Anyone who supports the widespread expansion of wind farms must be aware that they will also support a significant number of fossil fuel power plants.
It is either hypocritical or a sign of ignorance of fundamental engineering principles to support the expansion of wind farms while opposing almost all new gas power plants, as some environmentalists do.
Reality must take precedence over public relations for a technology to succeed because Nature cannot be deceived, as the great physicist Richard Feynman once said.
(Read more: Pros And Cons Of Wind Energy In The U.S.)
Wind Energy Reliability Challenges
The likelihood that a product will carry out its intended function under specified circumstances for a given amount of time is referred to as reliability.
When working with design engineers to improve products, reliability engineers and researchers use field data, experiments, and analytical techniques to ascertain the failure rates of products over time and under particular circumstances.
The reliability of wind energy that is currently in use is a topic of active and difficult research.
There are numerous databases that track wind energy breakdowns and outages around the world, but there is no standard procedure for determining what information should be collected, how to collect it, and how to record it. There are additional issues that researchers have found:
Because wind energy operators view the data as proprietary, it’s possible that it won’t be available.
Due to variations in component technologies and construction, it is challenging to compare data from one wind energy to another.
Comparing data from comparable wind energy operating in various environments (dry vs. wet, hot vs. cold, etc.).
It is challenging to compare data from more recent wind energy to data from older, smaller wind energy because wind energy designs and technologies are changing quickly.
Most of the wind energy in use today was installed less than 20 years ago, despite the fact that its lifespan is typically 20 years.
Most of the time, complete lifecycle field data is not available, and the oldest wind energy with the greatest amount of field data is not typical of the most recent designs and technologies.
Additionally, there is a dearth of published research on failure analyses of wind energy parts, and what data there is tends to come from more dated models. Comparing the failures of similar components in various turbines becomes challenging as a result.
For instance, there are numerous ways a gearbox could malfunction. It can be difficult to analyze gearbox failures on comparable wind energy without knowing the precise mechanism by which the gearboxes failed in the field.