Driving efficiency in wind farm maintenance and hydro maintenance to reduce costs

Results from PA Consulting Group's renewable benchmarking programmes for hydro plants and wind farms show the potential to improve efficiency and reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) costs by up to 50 per cent.

Finding the optimal operations and maintenance approach in wind power or hydro power can prove challenging because hydro plants and wind farms vary so much in size, location and environmental factors. This makes it difficult to compare one to the other and to develop standard measures for best practice in operational efficiency to realise cost savings.

Companies are therefore using PA's benchmarking programmes, co-developed with major players such as Vattenfall and Statkraft, as a vital management tool to share operations and maintenance performance standards and establish best practice.

The hydro O&M benchmarking programme: in the Nordics, this programme has established industry-wide performance standards and is continuously used as a tool for measuring operational cost-effectiveness. A number of improvement initiatives have been developed by the industry to ensure cost savings as a result of the operational insight gained from participating in this programme.

The wind farm O&M benchmarking programme: reducing O&M costs in wind power generation is becoming increasingly important to a wind farm's bottom line. Across this young industry, owners and operators are using insight from PA's benchmarking programme to establish industry-wide performance standards. Now in its fourth year, our programme is building momentum around the world and boasts access to operational data from seven countries, the majority of turbine manufacturers and over 25 per cent of global offshore capacity.

To find out more about using benchmarking as a strategic management tool in the energy sector, please contact us now.