Failure rate and downtime survey of wind turbines located in Spain

Abstract

Publicly available wind turbine failure rate and downtime studies are scarce in the scientific literature. Recent surveys in the field reveal that only 20 studies of wind farms based in Europe, Asia and the U.S. have been published, but there are no studies analysing wind farms located in Spain. With Spain holding the second place in terms of installed capacity in Europe, and the fifth worldwide, the importance of the Spanish wind power sector is evident. The present study comprehensively analyses the Spanish WT fleet in terms of yearly installed capacity and number of machines installed per technology and capacity ranges. The current fleet age ranges are also analysed. Under this scenario, the present work aims to contribute to the literature with a new failure rate and downtime study, where 75 WTs from six wind farms located in Spain are analysed over a period of 11 years. The most critical assemblies are identified per WT technology type and in general for the whole data set. Finally, the failure rate and downtime results obtained for the Spanish survey are compared against a selection of similar previously published studies.