A STUDY OF ONSHORE WIND TURBINE PROPERTY DAMAGE

As new capacity enters the wind energy market, property damage and forced outage losses of wind turbines are becoming more frequent. Risk assessment and property loss prevention for wind turbines are common goals for owners, operators, manufacturers, and insurers. In this work, wind turbine failures or damage from industry experience and literatures are reviewed and analyzed along with turbine property loss events at FM Global clients' insured wind farms, with a focus on understanding the external and internal factors that drive the turbine damage through various failure modes, and for different modules or components. The types of property damage considered include breakdowns due to windstorms, lightning strikes, fires, as well as other mechanical and electrical breakdowns. The damage events are also analyzed from a component perspective including major items such as turbine blades, generators, gearboxes, other electrical and mechanical components etc. The risk of wind turbine property losses is discussed in terms of both frequency and severity of the events. The study reveals important trends of wind turbine property losses and indicates potential paths to effective loss prevention for various stakeholders in the wind energy industry.