MAIN PUBLICATION :

• APPENDIX
• ABREVIATIONS
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES
• EVENTS

Availability

Wind turbines, the balance of plant infrastructure and the electrical grid will not be available the whole time.  Estimates are included for likely levels of availability for these items, averaged over the project lifetime.

Turbine availability

This factor defines the expected average turbine availability of the wind farm over the life of the project.  It represents, as a percentage, the factor which needs to be applied to the gross energy to account for the loss of energy associated with the amount of time the turbines are unavailable to produce electricity.

Balance of Plant (BOP) availability

This factor defines the expected availability of the turbine transformers, the on site electrical infrastructure and the substation infrastructure up to the point of connection to the grid of the wind farm.  It represents, as a percentage, the factor that needs to be applied to the gross energy to account for the loss of energy associated with the downtime of the balance of plant.

Grid availability

This factor defines the expected grid availability for the wind farm in mature operation.  It is stressed that this factor relates to the grid being outside the operational parameters defined within the grid connection agreement, as well as actual grid downtime.  This factor also accounts for delays in the wind farm coming back to full operation following a grid outage. It represents, as a percentage, the factor that needs to be applied to the gross energy to account for the loss of energy associated with the downtime of the grid connection.