Assessing the Factors Impacting on the Reliability of Wind Turbines via Survival Analysis—A Case Study

Samet Ozturk, Vasilis Fthenakis and Stefan Faulstich
Additional contact information
Samet Ozturk: Columbia University, 116th St & Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA
Vasilis Fthenakis: Columbia University, 116th St & Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA
Stefan Faulstich: Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology—IEE, Königstor 59, 34119 Kassel, Germany

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: The failure of wind turbines is a multi-faceted problem and its monetary impact is often unpredictable. In this study, we present a novel application of survival analysis on wind turbine reliability, including accounting for previous failures and the history of scheduled maintenance. We investigated the operational, climatic and geographical factors that affect wind turbine failure and modeled the risk rate of wind turbine failure based on data from 109 turbines in Germany operating for a period of 19 years. Our analysis showed that adequately scheduled maintenance can increase the survival of wind turbine systems and electric subsystems up to 2.8 and 3.8 times, respectively, compared to the systems without scheduled maintenance. Geared-drive wind turbines and their electrical systems were observed to have 1.2- and 1.4- times higher survival, respectively, compared to direct-drive turbines and their electrical systems. It was also found that the survival of frequently-failing wind turbine components, such as switches, was worse in geared-drive than in direct-drive wind turbines. We show that survival analysis is a useful tool to guide the reduction of the operating and maintenance costs of wind turbines.

Keywords: wind turbines; reliability; survival analysis; failure; down times; availability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/11/3034/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/11/3034/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:11:y:2018:i:11:p:3034-:d:180615

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().