Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) Database

The Department of Energy (DOE) published a 2008 report describing a scenario in which wind energy provides 20% of the United States electricity production by the year 2030. In order for wind generated energy to reach high electrical market penetration, there must be confidence in fleet operating performance levels. These are judged both by energy delivery and low operating costs. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has initiated a Reliability Collaboration and System Analysis activity in support of the DOE’s mission to enable continuous reliability improvement of wind turbines in the United States. This activity centers around the Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) Database, which is a DOE-funded national reliability database that enables the analysis of wind plant operations, to benchmark the reliability performance of the current installed wind fleet, including characterizing operating performance at a system-to-component level and identifying technology improvement opportunities.

Wind Turbine Reliability Benchmark Report
This public Benchmark report is the second industry report to be issued under the Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) national database project, with the first being published in October 2011. This public benchmark represents analysis of US wind fleet performance based on aggregated fleet reliability data and includes “directional” results that look at a system-level failure pareto, with both event frequency and duration explored, Availability Time Accounting and information regarding the data collection and analysis process utilized for producing the report.

Download Benchmark Reports

Sandia CREW 2012 Wind Plant Reliability Benchmark – Presentation

Sandia CREW 2012 Wind Plant Reliability Benchmark – Technical Report

Sandia CREW 2011 Benchmark Report – Presentation

Sandia’s CREW team also keeps an archive of our past reliability publications at http://energy.sandia.gov/?page_id=3057#WPR