The lifetime of a renewable energy asset

In the world of large-scale renewables, a data driven setup is critical to tap into the opportunities as well as derisking from the view of the owner and operator in all lifetime steps - from design to end of life assessment. 

Whether you're commissioning a new project, navigating warranty periods, exploring a renewal of service contracts and/or self-operate optimisation or even considering lifetime extension, the right data insights play a crucial role in your asset management. 

At Clover Energy, we know that data is a powerful tool at every stage. The earlier you start leveraging data, the more value it accumulates over time. By maintaining clear oversight of asset performance, you gain leverage in critical discussions between asset owners, the operator, OEMs and very technically capable finance providers. The right data strategy gives you control. This is no matter if you are a long-term owner or are looking into divesting during the lifetime. 

The scope of this paper is to cover the key challenges that can be eased by incorporating data driven decision making throughout the lifetime phases of the asset. 

In Clover Energy we simplify this into 4 phases:

Installation and commissioning are usually busy times for a project, and discussing and setting data requirements during this time is not going to be easy to push through; therefore, it is by far recommended to sort out these requirements prior to this stage. For the parties involved here, the incentive is to finish as quickly as possible, as you are likely to be behind schedule.  
Both you and the OEM are more likely to be interested in getting it “over with”, so you can start production and initiate the return of your substantial investment. 

However, this is also the time to ensure that the product you are receiving is the product you were promised.  

Accessing data enables you to do your own investigations and verifications. By having the basic data flowing home you can do your own investigations, along with availability tracking and classification, to verify exactly how the asset was checked during commissioning and operated during the TOC test. This will let you raise any concerns before accepting handover of the asset and paying the final price to the OEM. 

By utilising the data available you can avoid releasing payments before a validated and reliable handover. This way you can minimise potential value losses from poor commissioning and make sure that the OEM rectifies critical issues before leaving the asset for the operational teams. 

Utilising data during this phase protects your return of investment on your asset.

The EU wind capacity pipeline for installation and commissioning over the next 5 years is more than 100 GW, there is a lot to do!

Source: GlobalData

Classically, at least the first 2-5 years of operations are under a service and warranty agreement (SWA) with the OEM. They will promise a certain availability or yield and set the operational cost for having them handle all the maintenance and monitoring of the assets.

Depending on the long-term goals for your asset you might have different interests during this period. A good baseline for data usage would be to do your own tracking and classification of asset availability, as this would enable you to challenge the OEM on their allocation and making sure that you get any lost revenue compensation that you are entitled to.

Monthly Availability report dashboard from Clover Energy demo product - based on Clover Performance Product solution.

In general, you want to optimise asset performance, so they produce as much power as possible, ideally during periods where you can get the most money for this power as well.

Beyond this you want to push the operational costs for maintaining your asset down, without damaging the integrity of the asset.

If your assets are offshore then every visit is a sizable expense. By challenging the use of resources and logistics you can optimise the use of your OPEX and improve the CO2 impact of the operations.

Furthermore, the asset data can tell you if stop alarms are being reacted to in the correct way. Some stop alarms can safely be remotely reset a few times, while others cannot. As an owner or operator this can inform you if the integrity of the turbines is properly considered by the control center monitoring the assets.

Looking towards the end of warranty it would be in your best interest to track critical integrity issues in the OEMs operational processes. 

You might also be interested in checking the service and maintenance quality to ensure long term reliability of your asset. Some of the yearly maintenance will be distinguishable through the asset alarm and sensor data, enabling you to track the health status post service.

When you approach End of Warranty (EoW) you reach the second time in the asset lifetime where you have a leverage point with the OEM. Here you have a chance of having the OEM agree to additional rectifications of technical issues on your assets. If you know where to look and can verify with data! 

It is normal to have a walk down of your assets leading up to EoW, but it might not be realistic to do a thorough walk down of every single asset. By utilising your historical data, you can identify the “unhealthiest” assets to focus on, to ensure that the biggest items are caught and rectified before exiting the warranty period. 

An example of this could be specific components on some assets having “worked” extensively compared to the norm. Such as a yaw motor having already run for what was expected for the whole lifetime of the asset, in this case you would want the OEM to find the cause of this overtime work of the component and replace the component before handover after warranty. 

By leveraging your data in this way, you can stay on the forefront of issues, challenge the OEM on their assumptions, and get the full value of your SWA. 

After your initial warranty period you might choose to get a second term SWA with the OEM, you might switch to another independent service provider, or you are operating the asset yourself.

Top alarm list dashboard from Clover Energy demo product - based on Clover Performance Product solution.

The overall goal remains the same as during the warranty period, you want to get as much long-term revenue as possible, with as little maintenance costs as possible.

Continuous tracking of your asset performance is key to catching bad trends early on. You want key performance measures to drive the decision-making process to make sure you are prioritising the right initiatives, either through OEM/third party or within your own organisation.

Same as during the warranty period, every visit counts, every unnecessarily consumed spare part drives the cost of operations up. You need transparency on the happenings of your asset if you want any chance to optimise the OPEX costs. 

If you are self-operating, adding predictive maintenance into your data applications would also be ideal. Condition monitoring on both major and minor components can help limit any unplanned downtime on your assets, as the prediction of failures can let you optimise your use of both logistics and people resources by planning ahead. 

Having a solid and detailed grasp on your asset performance will also help you with any refinancing, divestments or major upgrade investment assessments as they will be driven by technical understanding of remaining lifetime. 

Monthly Production/Availability report from Clover Energy demo product - based on Clover Performance Product solution.

As you approach the time where you need to make decisions on the remaining lifetime of your asset, it will only benefit you to have the complete fault and maintenance history of your asset. This will give you a holistic view of the health of your assets and will enable technical experts into giving you realistic estimates on how much extension of originally expected life you could potentially get out of the essential components in your asset. 

This way you can make an informed decision on how you wish to proceed, with minimal risk of unwanted surprises, like major breakdowns on your asset. 

Once you reach the decommissioning stage, having the historical data of the asset, like running conditions and age of different major components, could give you a leverage point in negotiating the price when selling for potential re-powering projects or spare parts refurbishes.

In Clover Energy we specialise in utilising the data which is available from the assets. Along with a strong technical know-how from turbine design all the way through operations, we focus on making sure data is utilised where it brings the most value. Making sure that the needed insights to create a transparency on the actual happenings on your assets is available to you. 

We focus on what you need to achieve your goals, to make sure you are not investing in a data package and data platform that does not fit your needs – but one that is scaled exactly to your setup. With a clear picture of what is “need-to-have" and what is “nice-to-have" data from your assets. 

There are different ways to achieve results with Clover Energy as we do our best to stay flexible to customer requirements.  

One way are digital solutions which we can deploy in your own data infrastructure. It will be containerised products, which can run our logics and analytics on your data and push the output to your own data storage solution. 

Our digital products fall into two categories, Clover Performance and Clover Diagnostics. Clover Performance are services for availability and performance tracking, which can serve you throughout your asset lifetime no matter if you are an owner, operator or both.  
While Clover Diagnostic covers integrity monitoring and asset health checks, which are particularly relevant if you are doing your own operations or during periods where the asset health needs a more thorough evaluation, e.g., commissioning, EoW and Lifetime extension. 

 
If you do not have your own data infrastructure, and do not have a need for day-to-day insights into the going-on's of your asset, then we can offer weekly, monthly or quarterly reports, where you can supply smaller datasets to us in the frequency that you require reports. And then we will return reports containing the most relevant insights and deep dives on your asset performance.  

For those that need Subject Matter Expertise support we also offer technical consultancy, where we will support your own development of these abilities. This will help you streamline your own organisation learnings, as we can guide you through the initial steps. 

Data is no longer an option, but a requirement to run a good business. The European Data Act has only solidified this further. After September 2025, the OEMs need permission from the owners to access data from the assets, not the other way around.

So how are you going to utilise your asset data going forward?