Vestas Toolkit – Is it moral?

What is Vestas Toolkit?

Vestas Online is a digital platform providing wind turbine owners (under Vestas’ service agreement) easy and secure access to turbine-specific self-services. Within the portal, you have access to documentation, planning tools, service history and, crucially, support. In this sense, Vestas are providing a service, and it is fair for them to charge for it. There are tools in here that are user-friendly and the technicians (if you’ve pinched them from Vestas) are familiar with the interface.

What does it cost?

It has been reported the cost is anywhere from £5k/WTG/year to £50k to £500k/wind farm, depending on the size. No small amount then, given you have already bought the wind turbine and are either paying to maintain it yourself or paying an ISP in the tens of thousands to maintain for you. There have also been reports of Vestas refusing to help operators who have a small Vestas fleet, no order book and a bias to self-performing. Vestas’ commercial team have had to take a hard-nosed approach to revenue as the market pushes turbine profitability down and OEMs away from multi-brand service. They must make money somewhere.

What are the limitations?

Even if you pay, you won’t get everything. Ask yourself the question; can you perform the below?

• Fetch basic configuration files
• Change parameters
• Review the alarm log
• Upload config files
• Restore backup
• Operations Log
• Converter data
• Change config with time stamps
• I/O system access
• Safety system signals
• Network signals
• Check network status
• Change IP addresses of WTGs
• Advanced config to review parameters
• Trigger signals

V90-3MW Wind Farm in Scotland

Is it moral or just progressive economics?

I am not qualified to answer whether it’s legal, but is it moral? If you purchase a car, you should be able to work on it yourself, or at least choose who services it for you. A redeeming feature of free market capitalism is that you have a choice over quality, price and speed. You can pick two at least.

John Deere recently lost a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission over limiting farmers’ access to spares, software and tools, and their right to work on their equipment. So what Vestas is doing is not without precedent but is it the same thing?

The World Economic Forum, in its 2016 surrounding the Great Reset, states “we will own nothing and be happy”. The sustainable premise was intended as founding an economic model based on servitisation where design and manufacturing are more focussed on the total cost of ownership: repair, maintenance and energy consumption, rather than just stuff being designed for cost and to last a day over the warranty period. Whilst it was a well-intentioned essay designed to rescue the masses from an economic model geared on infinite growth with finite natural resources it didn’t land that way. It furthered the divide between the elites who own all the assets, and the people that are kept in labour to afford rent, clothes, cars and white goods. If you don’t pay, they take it away.

Vestas are trying this model on but what they have done is blend the two pricing models and after the fact that  you have already paid £1m/MW for a WTG. It’s not power by the hour. You do own the asset. So why can’t you choose who works on it?

What’s the risk of going without?

Vestas provide you enough to service your turbines but if there is any fault slightly beyond the ordinary which requires a callout, and you’ve got an old wind farm or small number of turbines, you find yourself at the bottom of a long list and a downed turbine gets very costly very quickly. There aren’t enough techs to go around. This is how they justify the high subscription costs. Yes, if you don’t have a contract, they are not obliged to respond in a given timeframe (just like a plumber) but if they paywall or restrict the access required to rectify the issue, then I don’t think that’s right. Particularly with modern turbines, there is a greater emphasis placed on software, IP and cyber security updates. Wind farm techs hit a troubleshooting wall and are not limited by ability (like a plumber) but access. They cycle through the same three options on the HMI, trying to assign an IP address whilst on hold with Vestas, and being taunted by “Your call is important to us.”

What are the alternatives?

Just like car ownership, if you want to be able to work on a wind turbine yourself, buy an old one. Get yourself a Haynes manual, a 10mm spanner, equip your eldest son with a torch and teach him how to swear like a man. Credit where it’s due, Vestas make some bloody good wind turbines, they are world number one for a reason. Their 90s’ hits, such as the V52, V80 and V90 (2MW), are classics, and they still run Vestas Classic. Even the V90-3 isn’t too bad, once you get over the integrated drivetrain. There’s no need to operate Vestas Global and you can take your pick of ISPs, spare part or repair providers. There are out of contract V90-3 sites still hitting over 98% availability, despite being over 15 years old.

If you have a newer Vestas machine or you are running Vestas Global, say V100 and newer, then controller retrofit may be an option for you. If your relationship with Vestas is irreparable, you can’t justify the toolkit costs or are looking to self-perform then controller retrofit could be the beginning of a strategy change long overdue. This negates the need for toolkit subscription, Vestas’ callout waiting time and costs, and it takes you out of their ecosystem. There are some downtime and hardware costs associated with retrofit but ask yourself the question, what does 3 months downtime mean to you?

Controller retrofit negates the need for Vestas toolkit

Making the case for switching

You want an O&M strategy change but need data access to enable it. The true challenge is selling it to accountants. They understand cost but not the nuances of operating a wind farm: the grease, the training, the lack of documentation and data, the gaslighting and ignored emails from OEMs. Someone who recently departed from Vestas said to me “It’s [O&M] not proper engineering compared to what happens inside the OEMs.” I had to disagree. I said it’s engineering with one arm tied behind your back. We don’t have the ability to flick to the answers page at the back of the textbook or even walk the halls of the office and speak with the guy who designed the thing. The operations job is reverse engineering, insufficient resources, cunning and multi-disciplined. Discomfort in employment. Why not make your life easier and get access to the back of the textbook?

Who benefits from controller retrofit?

Anyone who has a bonus linked to availability or AEP

Technicians

They will have greater access to alarm logs, parameters and the ability to troubleshoot is more intuitive and less restrictive. Depending on competencies user, access can be set at different levels to ensure that cowboys don’t get carried away with alarm resetting. A quality-of-life investment into the boys (and girls). How many bad days are they away from speaking to a recruiter?

SCADA engineers

They will get greater access to data. Snapshot logs, full control, higher resolution data rather than 10-minute averages. Thigh-rubbing levels of data analysis and manipulation. Local and remote resets, API for visuals and data historians are as standard.

Electrical Engineers

High resolution converter data for reliability investigation and troubleshooting becomes easier once you have access to the converter controller. Should the wind farm be considering co-location for BESS, power park controllers can be used for easy integration and enablement of balancing mechanism revenue.

Reliability Engineering

One thing I’ve learned in my career (still here) in reliability is that failure data is generally poor. Asset registers, failure rates and investigations are limited and restricted. All that university education, only to have your RCA be the equivalent of knitting smoke with cobbled together spreadsheets and rumour. Good source data ensures that your recommendations and conclusions are informed rather than an expanded report based on a conversation that you had with a tech at site over a coffee and your first cigarette.

Life extension

Life extension studies are only as good as the input data. If you have limited data for service records, inspections or load information, then your study will be heavily caveated. Stick a DNV sticker on it and it might be good enough for the banks, but it will be more conservative than your Essex Grandad. Load modelling is part of controller retrofit to ensure that operation remains within the design envelope and models can be provided. With additional access to CMS, converter, SCADA and pitch data, you can make an informed decision rather than a conservative one. You also avoid legacy controller hardware issues. New EU Cyber Security legislation has forced a lot of companies to discontinue legacy controllers to stay compliant.

Asset management

O&M contract renewals or toolkit renewals are easier to negotiate when you have full access to the wind turbine, and you can throw the keys to whoever you want. Controller retrofit costs can also be negotiated with AEP increases, subject to data analysis.

Vestas V42. Still going strong. Can’t remember taking this one but judging from the sky it was either Scotland or Ireland in August.

Conclusion

Someone in asset management said to me recently that some of their customers regret leaving their OEM and some have a better time with ISPs. It depends, really. People, plant and processes. Full wrap service agreements (FSAs) aren’t a full wrap anymore. You inevitably end up with guacamole and beans on your fingers. Owners are moving to optimise revenue whilst minimising risk. Some with contracts like colanders. There is an argument to invest in access through controller retrofit, get yourself out of the ecosystem, take full control of your own wind turbines and throw the keys to the winner of a competitive tender, based on your terms.

So where does that leave our OEM friends? We want them to survive. From their perspective there are big sustainability pillars to solve:

Politics – replacing US offshore, subsidy free generation and the rise of right wing governments

Environment – grid, material recovery and high material costs

Economics – how to produce quality products against China and still make money

Vestas’s toolkit is symptomatic of these demands: they are royalties from their greatest hits. We all want Vestas to keep making their quality wind turbines. Having worked in manufacturing for almost a decade, it’s very hard to make money selling quality products and I do not begrudge their actions. They can hardly do a whip around at Hamburg for the free drinks. Have we considered stopping making bigger and bigger turbines and optimise what we have? We could decide that as a collective economic policy. Revolution rather than evolution is needed. Keep ’em spinning.