Operations & Maintenance
RSS feedNews & in-depth analysis of wind farm and turbine operations & maintenance, including turbine & blade failure, access, monitoring & control systems, health & safety, refitting, repowering, wind monitoring and site security.
Using drones for offshore spare parts delivery
Siemens Gamesa, Ørsted and vessels supplier Esvagt are exploring how drones could be used to transport tools and spare parts to offshore wind farm technicians working on turbines.
Vestas aims to improve safety record
Vestas plans to pilot new safety initiatives using predictive analytics and augmented reality this year, with a view to cutting its rate of recordable injuries by more than half by 2025.
Generating heat from excess wind
Local utility Stadtwerke Rostock and transmission operator 50Hertz will be using the oversupply of wind power in northern Germany to generate heat for the Rostock district.
News and Analysis
Is Germany's offshore sector about to hit the buffers too?
Offshore wind in Germany outpaced onshore during 2019, with 1,111MW added last year, bringing the total operating offshore fleet to 7,516MW from 1,469 turbines.
Vestas plans 'zero-waste turbines' by 2040
Vestas plans to eliminate non-recyclable waste from the manufacturing, operation and decommissioning of its wind turbines by 2040, becoming the first turbine maker to announce such a target.
SGRE signs quay deal for Le Havre factory
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) and port manager Haropa Ports, have signed a key deal to build an industrial offshore wind complex at the Port of Le Havre.
Chinese repowering boom expected from 2023
Repowering in China is expected to accelerate rapidly from 2023 as its wind power fleet ages, with more than 21GW to be upgraded by 2028.
VIDEO: France decommissions its oldest wind project
France's oldest wind project in Port-la-Nouvelle, southern France, has been decommissioned with all of its turbines set to be almost entirely recycled.
In depth
Windpower Monthly review of 2019 -- part 2
The next generation of new turbines continues apace in the second half of the year, but financial woes among many of the industry's western OEMs also bite. Here are the top articles from the latter half of 2019.
Windpower Monthly review of 2019 -- part 1
A spate of technology launches dominated the first half of the year, with a new generation of prototypes also being installed. Here are the top articles from the first half of 2019.
Look and listen for blade defects
The latest theories and current practices of rotor-blade monitoring and maintenance in the 100GW US wind market were subjected to lively and informed debate at the Windpower Monthly forum in Austin, Texas.
Viewpoint: How blockage effects skew energy-yield forecasts
After correcting some key methods behind the original estimates, major offshore wind developer Ørsted recently made news with a downward revision of the expected internal rate of return for seven of its offshore wind projects.
Horns Rev 1, 2, 3: three generations of turbine output analysed
The three projects that make up the Horns Rev offshore-wind hub off Denmark's west coast perfectly illustrate how the sector developed over the last two decades. Windpower Monthly dissects the performance data to see if bigger really is better.
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