O&M opinions and insights for the offshore wind industry

Report calls for lower outage time

The offshore wind industry has paid little attention to outage time. This claim is made by MAKE Consulting in a recently released report about offshore wind O&M in Northern Europe.

The report describes that turbines are becoming larger, with the current average of 3.9 MW expected to increase to 5.9 MW by 2020. But this means that losses associated with downtime will become even more costly, particularly from failure of major components. As a result, service providers are forced to implement strategies to reduce downtime from major component failures. Continue reading

Better cooperation across the offshore wind industry will help reduce costs of wind energy

Reducing costs of operation is critical to the long-term future of offshore wind energy. We need to see more cooperation between utilities, turbine manufacturers and vessel operators in optimising contracts, resources and standards across the industry if we are to see the efficiencies the industry demands.

A recent report on the offshore wind industry commissioned by OffshoreWindOM.com highlights the significant cost savings available. Digging deeper into the research behind the report, there are several important factors that will help drive the industry to the next level. Continue reading