Many of the hydro schemes and, more recently, wind turbines that we look after were built in the heady days of the Feed-In Tariff; some many, many years before! These renewable energy generators have successfully navigated their adolescence and are entering the grown up years of life.
As we all know, as we pass through these grown up years of our lives, we must find smarter ways to do things; we no longer have the luxury of youth on our side. And so the same is true of the machines that we own.
Identify your essential spare parts for renewable energy systems
One area where we can be smarter is to think about those critical systems or parts in our turbines that are critical to their successful operation, and to make sure we are not going to be caught short if there is an issue with them.
This is also more so the case because turbines that are 10+ years old may use parts that are no longer as readily available, or in some cases are unique and have to be reengineered (like the four pre-1950 turbines that we look after).
It is therefore becoming increasingly important to identify those spare parts that are essential, make sure we know where to get them, or better still, to have one or two of each kept locally to the turbine, should they be required. This is more important as systems age and parts become obsolete or replaced with newer variants, and therefore the originals are harder to source.
We were reminded of this recently on a German turbine, where following a short period of inactivity, it wouldn’t restart due to a simple solenoid coil failure. The part cost in the region of £40, but the downtime of a week waiting for the part to arrive cost the Client the best part of £3,000.
How can we help reduce your costs for spare parts for renewable energy systems?
We have committed – at our own cost – to hold some spare parts for renewable energy systems, including a number of the more common turbines and control systems that we service, but we cannot do that for everything.
We will be happy to carry out a spares review for your system and identify any critical spares, as well as their cost, and make a recommendation on what might be suitable to hold onsite. There will be a cost for this, but 9 times out of 10, it will be less than the cost of the downtime waiting…
Contact us about reviewing your spare parts for renewable energy systems.