This is an excerpt from the Third Quarter 2012 edition of the Wind Program R&D Newsletter.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) recently released its second annual public benchmark report for the Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) database.

CREW is a national reliability database that enables the analysis of wind plant operations and the ability to benchmark the reliability performance of the current U.S. wind fleet. The CREW database gained traction in late 2009 with a partnership between SNL and Strategic Power Systems (SPS). SPS manages the Operational Reliability Analysis Program (ORAP) system, which collects monthly time, event, and capacity-based data from more than 2,000 gas and steam turbines worldwide.  Through collaborative efforts between SNL and SPS, ORAP for wind will allow the wind industry to report on wind turbine and plant reliability, availability, and maintainability once it completes the commercialization phase in late 2012. This development would not have been possible without the support of SNL's industry partners: EDF Renewable Energy (formerly enXco Service Corporation), Shell Wind Energy Inc., Xcel Energy, and Wind Capital Group.

While the participating wind plants are land-based, the techniques, knowledge, and partnerships gained during the creation and development of the CREW database can be applied to the conditions and issues of offshore wind plants as well.  These efforts can enable analysis of the performance, reliability, and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs of large-scale commercial offshore plants. In CREW's first annual benchmark report, published in October 2011, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities occurred approximately once per week in land-based wind plants. The expected O&M costs for offshore wind plants is estimated to be two to five times greater than those of land-based wind plants due to the remote siting, difficulty of access, and increased loading. This means that having a technician physically accessing the turbine weekly is not sustainable. Research is needed to improve O&M processes that can increase availability and lower O&M costs, both leading to a meaningful cost of energy reduction.

Download the CREW Database Wind Turbine Reliability Benchmark.