Confidential onshore wind farm Making operational savings through challenging data and identifying contractual discrepancies

What was the aim of the work?

During the takeover of a new operations contract on a 50MW wind farm, Natural Power undertook a contract review to establish what was in the OEM’s and the owner’s scope, and where the HV boundary was located. We also carried out availability reconciliation for the turbines on the wind farm.

What was the outcome?

We performed our own analysis, found data discrepancies and provided contractual evidence to the client, rather than just presenting our own figures. This allowed our client to present a solid case to the OEM, challenge their claim and establish how to document and present in future years. We saved the client more than £300,000 over the contract term for the HV costs. We also saved them over an estimated £160,000 in bonuses from the availability reconciliation and set the standard for how to perform calculations over the wind farm’s operation for the next 15 years.

What did Natural Power do to get this result?

For the HV responsibility, we prepared the relevant safety rules inclusion certificates (SRICs) for the site. As part of the SRIC creation process, we carried out a full review of both the OEM’s service agreement and Natural Power’s contract with the client. A SRIC is an overview of the safety rules that apply to the site plant and apparatus. There are usually two sets of rules: electrical and mechanical, and wind turbine safety rules (WTSR). The WTSRs SRIC identifies the boundary point within the turbine that the OEM is responsible to and to what point they can work safely under the WTSR.

We identified that the OEM’s draft WTSR SRIC was incorrect. The service contract with the client detailed a boundary that was not in line with the one shown in the draft WTSR. As there was a gap between the boundary point in the service contract versus the draft SRIC. We proved that the OEM should have full responsibility for this gap, and not the client. The OEM did initially challenge our claim, as all of their other contracts passed this responsibility to the client hence the OEM’s draft SRIC put the responsibility on the client. If not challenged and accepted as the ‘norm’, the client would have inherited a contract where they would have to pay additional costs to cover this HV gap.

We also carried out availability reconciliation once a month on all 25 turbines, which were set up on a new control setting not seen before in this turbine type. We checked and confirmed the availability figure that the OEM presented as well as performing our own analysis. We used our in-house analysts to perform a data review, and we found differences between the OEM’s process figures  and our own. At times we were seeing a difference of around 10%  each month. After spending time with the OEM, we helped them understand how the data was being presented and managed to bring down the deviations to around 0.7% over the annual period. This 0.7% was outstanding due to a query regarding technical stops. The OEM presented their stance which, if accepted, would have resulted in a bonus payment. We challenged their stance as after carrying out a further contract review, we found no evidence to back up their claim. We passed this information to the client, who, after their own review and a contractual meeting with the OEM, agreed with our stance and rejected the OEM’s claim. The OEM accepted our stance and withdrew their bonus claim. Now that we have confirmed the approach to be taken we have continued to see the presented figures improve month on month as we have continued through the contract term.