Renewing strategy

Renewables enjoyed an impressive boom in recent years, with high ROIs and plenty of credit available. But the panorama is not so bright these days and one victim of cost-cutting policies is the level of assets maintenance services. Ricardo Moro, CEO at Global Energy Services, suggests ways to avoid this.

“Wind energy has grown around 25 percent annually during the last three years”
-Ricardo Moro

The current difficulty in obtaining financial resources for new projects is pressing asset owners to increase the profitability of those already in use. On a short-term perspective simply reducing operational costs like maintenance activities will achieve this, and many owners are seeking to increase productivity and efficiency since nowadays a proper improvement can mean signify difference between thriving and extinction.

This demand for productivity and efficiency cascades from the owners down to their suppliers, and among them are independent O&M service providers, which need to maintain (and increase, if possible) the availability and production of the plant with fewer human and material resources. As a result, there is a change in the rules and practices of the maintenance activity: O&M service contracts used to establish prices based upon the number of technicians employed in the plant; now prices are based upon plant availability and energy output, including rewards and penalties that derive from reaching (or not reaching) certain objectives. Calculations are used that take into account all relevant factors like grid availability, weather conditions, and turbine availability.

Technicians used to be permanently allocated to a specific plant but are now arranged in groups so that some ‘general-purpose’ teams attend a range of nearby wind or solar farms, whereas others, specialized in certain kind of operations (component exchange for example), cover a wider geographical circle. This is made possible thanks to current mobile communications technologies, which allow for online monitoring for the position of different teams.

From a task organization standpoint, corrective actions used to be the main driver of the activity but now there is a shift towards preventive and predictive maintenance. Shorter periods are being set up for the assessment of the running operations, with an increasing use of real time data collection tools and monitoring systems, and this in turn allows for the re-scheduling of certain activities whenever the analysis of the information reveals that it is advisable.

The list of benefits is extensive: reduction in failures, better accomplishment of preventive maintenance schedule (thus avoiding an accelerated aging of the asset), more rational planning and less unscheduled working hours with a positive influence on personnel motivation and a reduction of accidents.

All the measures described above are the necessary outcome of a very demanding financial environment and can be possible due to the fact that the renewable energy sector has reached a high degree of maturity. However, these new requirements should not be seen just as unavoidable problems that we need to overcome.

At Global Energy Services (GES) we face the situation as a great opportunity to gain competitiveness in the renewables sector. Wind energy, as an example, has grown around 25 percent annually during the last three years. According to BTM Consult, last year 28.190MW were installed leading to a cumulative worldwide total of 122.000MW. This means that the installed power has doubled in three years. All those new installations need to be maintained which presents a formidable opportunity for independent service providers. For the asset owners, a sound maintenance strategy that generates a small percentual improvement in availability and energy production will have significant effects in terms of plant profitability and, from a larger perspective, in reduced CO2 emissions.

Ricardo Moro is Chief Executive Officer at Global Energy Services (GES), an independent services provider to the energy sector and world leader in the wind market with 4400 employees active in Europe, North America and North Africa. He is an Industrial Engineer and has over 20 years’ experience in the renewable energy sector, both in manufacturing and in service activities. He has held different positions in Gamesa including Deputy General Manager in the manufacturing division and has been CEO at GES since 2003.