The management of wind turbines should place priority on the operator's interests. Unfortunately, operators are rarely the focal points, as experience shows. Rather, it often seems that managers are only interested in generating regular revenue. For instance, management contracts usually have extremely little text, reveal little about the true scope of services, but have terms all the longer: maximum income with minimum expenses!
In addition, the numerous relations between operating companies and fund initiators often make managers less than independent. Errors and defects that could be attributed to the project developer or another constituent company have to be glossed over to prevent recourse claims. As a result, there is no transparency.
Few operating companies on the market can truly claim to represent the interests of investors 100%. Companies that themselves own wind farms and are therefore primarily interested in economic operation are most credible here. The demands on the management of wind farms thus have little to do with the number of wind farms managed. Rather, the quality of the work done is crucial. The basic goal of management should be the best return on investment. Transparency and professionalism are indispensable towards that goal.
Human error is inevitable, so demanding managers need a management system for all processes involved in technical and commercial management, including data acquisition and analysis, monitoring, controlling, and optimization. To keep expenditures and staff costs to a minimum, the capture of measurement and operational data should be fully automatic for all systems. The data should also be standardized to make different machine types comparable. In addition to the type of wind turbine, all of the infrastructure -- such as transformers, cabling, etc. -- should also be recorded. Furthermore, all crucial individual components, technical specifications, documents created during the service life, contracts, information about warranties, correspondence, etc. should be stored in the system.
It is now common industry practice to have service technicians (generally those of the manufacturer itself) be contracted to repair defects in a wind turbine. Defective parts are exchanged and invoiced to the operator. But few managers check whether a part may have already been exchanged a year ago and therefore still be under warranty. If warranty claims are filed for, it is usually because a staff member happens to remember the event. None of this is what one would call professional cost monitoring.
Prudent management therefore requires the seamless tracking of events and processes in a log book (central controlling tool). Here, all external and internal events -- such as alarms, status reports, etc. -- must be saved permanently with the exact date, time, etc. The same applies for all subsequent processes, such as the reaction times of staff, analyses, measures taken, costs, contracts, logs, correspondence, etc.
To provide investors, bankers, insurance companies, and manufacturers with transparent information, the management system should make it easy to provide data and reports. Central access to all measurement and operational data, documentation, documentation created during service lives, etc. should be possible.
A software example based on these requirements can be seen here.