The costs of wind power are falling, not only for turbine cost and performance, but also for operating and maintaining onshore wind farms. In just the last four years, operation and maintenance costs have dropped 38 percent, according to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Wind Operations and Maintenance Price Index.
The figures are based on average prices for full service operation and maintenance contracts in onshore wind farms between 2008 and 2012. For the report, which appeared in the first issue of the O&M Price Index, Bloomberg analysts examined confidential operation and maintenance contract data from 38 major wind power developers and service providers around the world.
The costs of wind power are falling, not only for turbine cost and performance, but also for operating and maintaining wind farms. Shown here, Siemens service engineers work in a wind turbine's gondola. (Source: Siemens)
Service providers consisted of turbine manufacturers, primarily in Europe and the Americas. The price data included 104 confidential and undisclosed contracts in more than 24 markets. Typical contracts considered in the report included replacement costs of major components -- for example, blades, gearboxes, and generators -- as well as scheduled and unscheduled maintenance work.
Compared to the costs of gas-fired and coal-fired generation, the capital costs of wind power have already become more competitive due to better turbine siting and wind farm management, as well as lower cost, more technically advanced turbines, said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, in a press release.
Wind project owners and investors are becoming increasingly interested in improving the performance and efficiency of wind assets, since better planning and more efficient management of spare parts can improve output and generators’ margins by cutting unplanned, unexpected downtime.
We've previously reported on remote-controlled climbing robots developed to make wind tower maintenance easier, cheaper, and safer by doing it remotely. Although these have not yet been deployed in anything resembling huge numbers, their use could also bring maintenance costs down even more in the future.
bob from maine, thanks for your comments on the danger to aquifers. I live in a county with compromised aquifers: so far, no chemical poisoning, but definitely, ones with levels too low to sustain a growing population, and perhaps even to sustain a non-growing one. (Hence the discussions here about desalination). The point is, once we've messed them up, fahgeddaboutit for the future. I don't see how risking one's water supply is an "acceptable risk," in any sense of the term.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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