Wind Turbine Performance: Turbine Downtime and Its Influence on Availability Terms for A Case Study

Along with the impact of environmental factors, typically wind speed behavior, wind turbine availability is a basic measure to evaluate the wind turbines' performance that can be interfered with by humans. Time-based and production-based are the key terms that define turbine availability according to IEC standards and wind power industry practice. This study provides an approach to analyzing turbine availability during project development and comparing actual operations, which has been shown to potentially have a 3% difference between Time-based and Production-based. For the demonstration, a 50MW wind farm is in operation, and two representative turbines are selected to analyze downtime and availability under different scenarios based on data collected over two years of operation. This paper provides useful information for negotiating commercial contracts with turbine operators, thereby facilitating the establishment of equitable conditions and financial incentives for the project.