The Hindu Business Line : Vestas goes the Formula 1 way to master wind systems

Recently in DenmarkThe longer a Formula 1 car stays on the track, the better its chances of winning the race. When the car goes in for a pit stop, each engineer and technician in the pit knows what he or she is supposed to do and how much time is available. Here again, the emphasis is on getting the car back on the track as quickly as possible. Or in Formula 1 terminology, the driver should know when to hit the pit and for how long.

A senior official of Vestas Wind Systems, the leading Danish manufacturer of wind turbines, used this analogy to explain how Vestas has brought down the time between inspections for a turbine, in the process making sure that the turbines work longer. This, in turn, means revenues for the investor.

Vestas gets a mass of real-time data electronically from nearly 10,000 of its turbines from across the world, the analysis of which has helped it bring down what it calls the MTBI – or in common man’s language, mean time between inspections.

The Wind Master

Explaining this to financial analysts and a group of Indian journalists, who were on a visit of various Vestas facilities in Denmark sponsored by the company, Mr Finn Strom Madsen, President, Vestas Technology, R&D, said increasing reliability of the turbines significantly lowered the cost of energy. “We know more about wind than anyone else,” he said.

Operating expenditure had significant influence on lifetime cash flow for a turbine and the company’s focus was to constantly achieve a reduction in this, which for an onshore turbine would account for about 30 per cent of lifetime cash flow. Ensuring a predictable cash flow would also result in significantly lower risk premium on the turbines.

Mr Madsen added that the focus was not on the cost per MW installed but on the cost per MWh delivered.

The session was held in Vestas’ new R&D centre in Aarhus – Denmark’s second largest city and to where Vestas will shift its corporate headquarters in two years from Randers – itself an “intelligent” building. A touch screen mounted on the wall in the lobby tells you the number of people inside the building at any given point in time, and dots indicate the people moving around.

Focus areas

According to Mr Madsen, the two areas of focus for the company are reducing the cost of energy for the customer – turbine output has increased 250 times in 30 years – and bringing down warranty provisions. Newer technologies and materials go into making the turbines now, thus reducing their weight, increasing their reliability and improving their efficiency.

Vestas did not believe that the only way forward was to increase the capacity of the turbines. Big did not necessarily mean the best. Also, it would not assume that one size would suit all. It had turbines up to 3-MW capacity and would come out with new turbines to meet market demand, but Mr Madsen told a questioner that he would not be able to provide more details.

“We will launch new products with focus on efficiency and reliability, but it will not be about size,” he said.

When Size matters

The price of components and cost of transport had become so expensive that it made no sense to go for bigger turbines as it would not automatically bring down the cost of energy.

According to him, size does not drive development of onshore wind turbines, while size does matter as far as offshore wind turbines are concerned. But, offshore is a niche area.

Mr Bjarne Ravn Sorensen, President, Vestas Control Systems, the division of the company that deals with the electronics that go in to a turbine, also made the point about the reliability of the turbines – they had to function in extreme weather conditions. IT solutions would drive the future of competitive wind power plants.

Car comparison

Mr Sorensen too used the comparison with a car to explain how much more reliable a turbine had to be.

A Vestas turbine operated approximately 8,760 hours a year with only two scheduled visits (by a maintenance engineer) each year while a car would drive for about 500 hours a year – assuming that it had covered a distance of 40,000 km at 80 km per hour. The car too would require two maintenance visits a year.

“We can learn a lot from the car industry when it comes to lean production, but we have to find our own way when it comes to robustness,” he said.

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