Strategy for Extending the Useful Lifetime of a Wind Turbine

Today, with a significantly large number of wind turbines reaching operational life spans longer than 15 years, it is essential that wind-turbine and wind-farm owners take informed decisions regarding the end of the turbines’ operational life, life extension, or decommissioning. To do so, the wind-turbine components must be inspected to ascertain their integrity and the risk of failure during continued operation. The type of inspection may vary, based on the extent of operational data available and the problems encountered previously by the turbine’s components.

Extending a turbine’s life beyond its usual design life of 20 or 25 years requires the owner to demonstrate – through inspections, operational data, or both – that the annual probability of failure of structural components is still acceptable, considering the maintenance history and component-failure modes.