Engineering news
The biggest offshore wind-farm in the world, situated in the Thames estuary, has achieved a capacity factor of 40% averaged over the past year, it has been revealed.
The London Array wind-farm occupies an area of 100KM2 on a site situated between the Essex and Kent coast. It comprises 175 Siemens 3.6MW wind turbines, with a combined capacity of 630MW.
The first power was produced in October 2012, and high reliability levels, combined with good average wind speeds across prolonged periods, means the wind-farm has achieved operational landmarks ever since.
Mike O' Hare, general manager of the London Array wind-farm, said: “We have achieved a 40% capacity factor averaged over the past year. The output for the year ending 31 December 2014 was more than 2.2TWh, and the record output for a single day was more than 14GWh, achieved on 6 February 2015.”
O' Hare said that the split of unscheduled and scheduled maintenance on the gigantic wind-farm was working at around 50/50. He said there had only been three 'major' component repairs across the whole site in the past year, requiring a new gearbox, a transformer and a main bearing exchange. “We use a host of sophisticated sensors around temperature, vibration and oil levels, on a real-time basis, to give us a good idea what's going on.”
O' Hare said the London Array turbines had a design life of 20 years, and were delivering healthy profits to the wind-farm's owners. “Often the best days for maintenance are when it's calm, and those are the worst days for generating power. It's a mixed blessing, I suppose,” he added.