Alpha Ventus: Deutsche Windtechnik Drastically Increases Technical Availability Of Adwen Turbines
Bremen, Germany - Deutsche Windtechnik has been servicing the six Adwen turbines at the alpha ventus offshore wind farm (OWP) since the beginning of 2020. The independent service provider has now been able to more than double the technical availability of the offshore wind turbines with the measures it has initiated.
Deutsche Windtechnik doubles availability of Adwen offshore turbines
When Deutsche Windtechnik took over the service of the six Aden offshore wind turbines in 2020, the technical availability was initially only 42 percent. After the availability was increased to 77 percent in 2020/2021, the value for the current year 2022 climbed to 94 percent with a continuing positive trend.
According to Deutsche Windtechnik, this strong result was due to an almost constantly high proportion of remote fault elimination of about 50 percent, as well as a package of measures for the gradual optimisation of turbine operation that was developed and implemented in close cooperation with the operator DOTI (Deutsche Offshore-Testfeld und Infrastruktur GmbH & Co. KG) and the operator Omexom Renewable Energies Offshore GmbH.
Operating days for offshore maintenance work halved
"Deutsche Windtechnik has made valuable improvements as an ISP and has proactively contributed to a significant increase in availability," Dirk Warnecke, Managing Director of the operating company Deutsche Offshore-Testfeld und Infrastruktur GmbH & Co. KG (DOTI) sums up.
In particular, early and transparent planning of maintenance and service operations as well as the consolidation of different service teams and competences succeeded in halving the number of days required for maintenance work from originally eight to ten in 2020 to four to five days in 2022. In addition, the safety concept was revised and the spare parts stock was expanded.
Jens Landwehr, Managing Director of the offshore unit of Deutsche Windtechnik, sees further potential: "The important thing now is to keep going and implement further optimisations, for example in the area of spare parts management and by eliminating further redundancies and developing more retrofits that increase availability. The turbines can clearly make an economic contribution to the energy transition, even though they were built in 2010."
Individual training concept developed for Adwen turbines
In order to ensure that the quality of the Adwen turbine service remains at a high level in the future, Deutsche Windtechnik trains its own technicians for the assignments: Employees with many years of experience in all operational areas of Adwen technology pass on their technical understanding to technicians on the wind turbines, for example in the form of exclusive live coaching sessions. Another component is special training on individual Adwen components. This ensures that the high quality standards are maintained.
About the alpha ventus offshore wind farm
The pioneering alpha ventus project was developed by Deutsche Offshore-Testfeld und Infrastruktur GmbH & Co. KG (DOTI) and the Foundation Offshore Wind Energy. The operator consortium DOTI was founded in 2006 by the three energy suppliers EWE, Eon and Vattenfall. The first preparations were made in autumn 2008, and the alpha ventus offshore wind farm was built by November 2009. 12 wind turbines from Adwen (previously AREVA) and Senvion (previously REpower), each with a capacity of 5 MW, were then installed, and the cumulative total installed capacity of 60 MW was commissioned successively by 2010.
In 2010, the use and expansion of offshore wind energy in Germany began with the inauguration of the alpha ventus offshore wind farm. Currently, offshore wind turbines with a capacity of around 7,900 MW (data: August 2022, as of 20.09.2022) are in operation in Germany.
Source: IWR Online, Sep 09 2022