Wind turbine reliability analysis

Against the background of steadily increasing wind power generation worldwide, wind turbine manufacturers are continuing to develop a range of configurations with different combinations of pitch control, rotor speeds, gearboxes, generators and converters. This paper categorizes the main designs, focusing on their reliability by bringing together and comparing data from a selection of major studies in the literature. These are not particularly consistent but plotting failure rates against hours lost per failure reveals that problems with blades and gearboxes tend to lead to the greatest downtimes. New, larger wind turbines tend to fail more frequently than smaller ones so condition monitoring will become increasingly necessary if levels of reliability are to be improved. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.