Assessment of the current state of techniques for wind turbines maintenance to ensure their effective operations – a patent-based analysis of the latest development trends

Abstract

The operation and maintenance costs of wind turbines make up a significant part of the total operating costs during the life of the wind turbine, especially when they are used in harsh environmental conditions. This thesis will analyse the important conditions for improving the economic performance of wind farms, which is highly dependent on the efficient operation and timely and high-quality maintenance of wind turbines. Patent research is a mandatory attribute for wind farms operations and maintenance, and for the development of new models of wind turbines. Owners, operators and developers of wind farms are always interested in the availability of full-fledged information that reflects modern achievements regarding the reliable operation of wind turbines, including a detailed list of patented technical solutions. Thorough patent assessment is becoming a significant topic as increasing amounts of patent applications are being submitted each year. Current methods of patents analysis have limited capabilities to provide comprehensive assessments, therefore alternative methods are needed to increase accuracy of full-text documents processing. The methodology for the selection and assessment of patent documents used in this thesis has been developed by Advanced Energy Technologies (AENERT). Such methodology has made it possible to obtain a number of important information positions, such as, for instance, development trends, characteristics of leaders in certain areas, evaluation of cooperative and technological relations between participants and monitoring of quantitative patent statistics for all constituents of technological processes. In this thesis, crucial patents are reviewed in the area of maintenance, repair, replacement of parts of industrial wind turbines with a horizontal axis of rotation. The results of the patent analysis indicate that patent activity is growing in the area of techniques for wind turbines maintenance. There are reasonable grounds to believe that in the coming years, maintenance, repair and replacement patent activity will be largely dominated by applications related to: assembly of blades, offshore windturbines, automatic manipulators or robots, testing static or dynamic balance of machines or structures, investigating the presence of flaws, defects or contamination, structures of working platforms for carrying out repair or diagnostic work.The data obtained can help to identify further the most vulnerable technical operations in the general list of operations related to maintenance, repair and replacement. This can further determine the boundaries of the technical capabilities of the proposed options for technical solutions, to get closer to understanding the prospects for their practical development and effective influence on the problem of extracting the maximum possible capacity factor.