Data-driven Life Prediction and Comparison
IEA Wind TCP – Task 42: Wind Turbine Lifetime Extension
The historic expansion of the global installed wind turbine capacity by 2021 is shown in Figure 1 and is illustrating that 1 TW will soon be reached (Lee & Zhao, 2022). The figure is however also showing that about 24-31 GW was installed 20 years, which is equal to the design lifetime of onshore wind turbines as specified by the IEC 61400-1 standard (IEC, 2019). Thus the global wind turbine capacity that has already undergone a decision about life extension is in the order of 30 GW. The average wind turbine rating installed around 2001 was in the order of 1-2 MW and this is showing that the 30 GW capacity older than 20 years corresponds to several 10000 turbines involved in life extension operations. A large number of owners therefore face the difficult decision whether to repower, decommission or lifetime extend their assets and the capacity involved in life extension operations will increase to about 200 GW over the next 10 years according to Figure 1.
To make sure that the most economically feasible solutions are chosen it is essential that relevant information gathered at the wind farms is used to support this decision process.
