Availon recently announced that it won a full maintenance contract for seven Vestas wind turbines. The German multi-brand service provider is taking over the full maintenance of seven out of a total of 12 Vestas V80 turbines in the Hakenstedt wind farm. The wind farm is located 30 kilometers west of Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
“The seven 2 MW turbines, were commissioned in 2003 and are to be maintained by Availon for five years as part of the ‘WindKeeper Complete Modular’ full-maintenance package. The contracts (began) in mid-December 2013, initially for two wind turbines and will then be extended to five further turbines at the start of March 2014,” commented Ulrich Schomakers and Markus Spitzer, Availon’s chief executives.
The contract, with an availability guarantee of 97 percent, includes the maintenance of all wind turbines including the wear parts package occurring twice each year, full-time remote monitoring, oil change and unscheduled maintenance, amongst other things. Furthermore, the repair or replacement of individual wind turbine components, up to and including add-on parts for major components, is also included in the deal.
As part of the full maintenance agreement, Availon will be collaborating with Energiequelle GmbH, a German renewable energy project developer and operator based in Kallinchen, a suburb of Zossen near Berlin, who will be responsible for the technical management of the wind turbines. In the area of wind energy, Energiequelle now controls the technical management of more than 600 turbines, predominantly in Germany.
“We have had previous positive experiences with Availon over the past five years relating to another wind farm, with another type of turbines. That’s why we are looking forward to expanding the cooperation with Availon as part of further projects,” says Lars Schiller, head of technical management at Energiequelle GmbH.
