What are the availability factors and operating reliability of wind farms?
Availability is usually high with modern wind turbines. Most wind plants using newer technology are running at greater than 98.5 percent, with effective forced outage rates typically less then 1 percent. Turbine maintenance is usually completed twice a year, resulting in about 12 to 18 hours of downtime for each session, although only a few turbines are generally down at any one time due to maintenance. The only time an entire facility comes off-line is for substation maintenance, which lasts for less than 12 hours and occurs twice a year, usually during low production periods.
