The sight of wind turbines spinning in the breeze in perfect synchronization like precision dancers – re­duc­ing reliance on foreign oil or other fossil fuels with each turn – is one that more Americans are witnessing every day. Hardly a road trip along interstates through Iowa, Nebraska or South Dakota is completed without seeing at least one oversized load of turbine blades or tower being transported to a wind farm down the road.

That expansion is what brought the three-pronged expertise of German wind turbine service provider Availon to Des Moines, Iowa, in 2009. A high-value rather than low-cost provider, Availon offers operation and maintenance, high-tech service and engineering, and parts for wind turbines throughout North America.

Although they may resemble pinwheels in the breeze, wind turbines act­ually are small but sophisticated electrical generating stations. Behind the blades is the equipment room, call­ed the nacelle, that measures app­rox­imately 12 feet wide by 20 feet long and is tall enough to stand up in. “There’s enough space to move around, but not enough space to do jumping jacks,” Availon’s Director of Sales John Boorman reveals.

Because they generate electricity from the movement of their blades, wind turbines require all the maintenance and engineering such a task requires, which is becoming more high-tech every year. “A wind turbine’s typical design life is 20 years,” Boor­man calculates. “By doing the right daily maintenance from day one, you can comfortably extend that life an additional five or more years. If you make short-term decisions on maintenance, you can shorten the life.”

Experience in Germany

Wind turbines have been built in Europe for decades. “Our company is based in Germany, where a lot of that wind power industry development took place,” Boorman points out. “Their fleet is 10 to 15 years older than the North American market. So we have experienced what doing quality maintenance earlier can add to those assets and seen the rewards of those best practices.”

Availon – whose North American headquarters is in Des Moines, Iowa – has crews of maintenance technicians who travel throughout North Am­erica. The company also opened a service and distribution center in Sweet­water, Texas. “We have a mix of traveling crews as well as permanent site staff that will be stationed at a site,” Boorman explains. “It depends on what the customer needs. A wind park of 20 or more turbines would justify a full-time staff for daily and scheduled maintenance.” 

The company’s high-tech service experts usually travel to different locations where their expertise is required.

Increasing Efficiency

A specialty of Availon is improving the performance of wind turbines after the manufacturer’s initial warranty expires in three to five years. “Once the turbines are designed by engineers and built by the turbine manufacturer, and the ownership and maintenance is taken over by the owner, we will go in and look for opportunities to improve the performance,” Boorman says. “A lot of times, design decisions were made, and we have the benefit of having years of operational history. We can second-guess some of those.”

If problems are found with a turbine, Availon’s engineers regard that as an opportunity to improve the turbine’s output, reliability and uptime. “Everything we do is based on improving the financial performance of the asset or lowering the labor costs by implementing some automated solutions,” Boorman explains. A typical six-month scheduled maintenance in­cludes replacing the lubricant and its filter, checking electronic components that wear over time and ensuring the turbine is still within the performance specifications proscribed for it.