Developing technical key performance indicators for operational management of wind power plants and analysing their implications

Abstract

This thesis deals with the difficulty of reporting performance of wind power plants to a higher management level and handling the implications. The principal of this research project, the operational management department of the Austrian energy company VERBUND Renewable Power GmbH, is responsible for managing operation and maintenance of a highly increasing number of wind power plants. Due to the obligation of preparing quarterly reports for the top management they are faced with the issue to select from a plethora of continuously monitored parameters of all their wind farms, indicators that reflect the actual performance best. Therefore the objective of this thesis was to develop few and meaningful key performance indicators (KPI) with focus attention on the comparability of the different wind farms with turbines from different vendors and in different countries respectively regions. Furthermore possible implications and recommendations for actions of the chosen set of KPIs were elaborated. Finally, a sensitivity analysis and a case study in form of calculating the KPIs for different wind power plants and analysing the results verified the significance of the chosen indicators.