Performance analysis in wind farms by data envelopment analysis and Malmquist index approaches

Abstract

Recently, rapidly spreading wind power plants are considered as inevitable local sources by countries having ever-increasing energy demand. The best way to get more benefits from these energy plants, which have averagely 20 years of economic life, is to reduce operating costs or to maximize the produced energy. Performance of the turbine in a wind farm can be observed by performance analysis tools, so that, it could provide information to the plant manager about whether the current sources were used efficiently or not. In this study, performance comparisons of turbines were analyzed by using data taken from current data gathering systems in the wind farms. Data Envelopment Analysis is used to compare wind turbines' two-year production performance in a wind farm and evaluated total factor productivities by Malmquist Index to examine changes in performance detailed. In the study, operation data for the years 2013 and 2014 of a current wind farm in Turkey were used. Consequently, low-performance turbines were identified, it has tried to understand the reasons for the performance losses, and development of performance-enhancing strategies were planned.